Samuel Johnson

The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.

I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces.

In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.

The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.

Many things difficult in design prove easy in performance.

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

This comes of James teaching me to think for myself, and never to hold back out of fear of what other people may think of me. It works beautifully as long as I think the same things as he does.

There is always a best way of doing everything.

No God and no religion can survive ridicule. No political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field, and live.

Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: “I’m with you kid. Let’s go.”

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.

You who write, choose a subject suited to your abilities and think long and hard on what your powers are equal to and what they are unable to perform.

The man who forgives is far stronger than the man who fights.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.

It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

It is proved…that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose.

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man, you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind, I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that.