Samuel Johnson

What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written.

The luster of diamonds is invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a picture are created by the shades; the highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue.

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

I found you essay to be good and original. However, the part that was original was not good and the part that was good was not original.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

While fools shun one set of faults they run into the opposite one.

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

People who can’t be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.

If a man’s eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.