Samuel Johnson

Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.

Those who attain to any excellence commonly spend life in some single pursuit, for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man’s virtues the means of deceiving him.

The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Christianity is the highest perfection of humanity.

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.

The one who cannot restrain their anger will wish undone, what their temper and irritation prompted them to do.

Why is that others have so much faith in me, while I have so little? Why can’t I have the same belief in me that they have? Why can’t I see in myself, what they do? What is it that makes me, hold myself back? How many more hurdles do I need to overcome? There are so many questions that I have to find the answers to. And I will only find them by focusing and being completely honest with myself.

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.

Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.

What do we live for; if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?

You will have bad times, but they will always wake you up to the stuff you weren’t paying attention to.

I wish for you the wisdom to realize that forgiveness has nothing to do with an apology.

A shoe that is too large is apt to trip one, and when too small, to pinch the feet. So it is with those whose fortune does not suit them.

The course of everything goes to teach us faith.

More knowledge may be gained of a man’s real character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.