Samuel Johnson

Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children.

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

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

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven’t started wondering about yet.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

I look up at the universe and ask, ‘What are you trying to teach me here?’ I know I won’t hear a reply, but asking the question, makes me begin looking for the answer.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!

There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss.