Samuel Johnson

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

Read your own compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.

I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?

Some debts are fun when you are acquiring them, but none are fun when you set about retiring them.

It is very iniquitous to make me pay debts, you have no idea, of the pain it gives one.

Debt is the secret foe of thrift, as vice and idleness are its open enemies.

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man; a debt he proposes to pay off with your money.

Tis against some mens principle to pay interest, and seems against others interest to pay the principle.

Debt certainly isn’t always a bad thing. A mortgage can help you afford a home. Student loans can be a necessity in getting a good job. Both are investments worth making, and both come with fairly low interest rates.

It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times.

To preserve their independence, we must not let our rules load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.

He who promises runs in debt.

Debts and lies are generally mixed together.

Debt is the secret foe of thrift, as vice and idleness are its open foes. The debt-habit is the twin brother of poverty.

Let us live is as small a circle as we will, we are either debtors or creditors before we have had time look around.

Good times are when people make debts to pay in bad times.

Interest on debts grow without rain.