Samuel Johnson

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.

Language is the dress of thought.

There is nothing so much seduces reason from vigilance as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman in marriage.

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption –pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism.

It’s much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

He who is upright in his way of life and free from sin.

Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

The truest end of life is to know that life never ends.

What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing about the origin and destiny of cats?

All the great ages have been ages of belief.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning’s greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.

Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It’s thin current slides away, but eternity remains.