Samuel Johnson

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

What is easy is seldom excellent.

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

So I became a newspaperman. I hated to do it but I couldnt find honest employment.

Rome – the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it – and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again – and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.

There is still vitality under the winter snow, even though to the casual eye it seems to be dead.

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is – Let there be truth between us two forevermore.

Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.

The endearing elegance of female friendship.

You are perfect. An exquisitely fine work of art, labor of love, suspended in silence. Bejeweled, trembling, kissed by a breeze, mesmerized by your beauty. You await in silence, beckoning me to a silken-wrapped slumber.

Although the masters make the rules for the wise men and the fools got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

Help a man against his will and you do the same as murder him.

Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated.