Samuel Johnson

He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor.

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

Many things difficult in design prove easy in performance.

Count on it, if a person talks of their misfortune, there is something in it that is not disagreeable to them.

Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.

The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

After a few months’ acquaintance with European coffee, one’s mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream after all, and a thing which never existed.

Gold will be slave or master.

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.

What you seek in vain for, half your life, one day you come full upon, all the family at dinner. You seek it like a dream, and as soon as you find it, you become its prey.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.

No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes.

All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.

The only thing grief as taught me is to know how shallow it is.

There is no such thing as the Queen’s English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!

Remember where you came from.

When you’ve told someone that you’ve left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past?