Samuel Johnson

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.

Wickedness is always easier than virtue, for it takes a short cut to everything.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o clock is a scoundrel.

Every other enjoyment malice may destroy; every other panegyric envy may withhold; but no human power can deprive the boaster of his own encomiums.

That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem.

You. Not wanting me. Was the beginning of me wanting myself. Thank you.

By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.

The seven deadly sins… food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man’s neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.

It’s so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don’t say it.

Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means – one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies.

There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.

The only prudence in life is concentration.

Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience.

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

A man sits as many risks as he runs.

He does not care for flowers. Calls them rubbish, and cannot tell one from another, and thinks it is superior to feel like that.