Samuel Johnson

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

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

Hunger is never delicate; they who are seldom gorged to the full with praise may be safely fed with gross compliments, for the appetite must be satisfied before it is disgusted.

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

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

Nothing is more common than mutual dislike, where mutual approbation is particularly expected.

The traveler that resolutely follows a rough and winding path will sooner reach the end of his journey than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hour of daylight in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages.

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life… I wanted to live so sturdily and so Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life… to drive life into a corner to know it by experience and be able to give an account of it in my next excursion.

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

I hold every man a debtor to his profession.

Patience and diligence, like faith, remove mountains.

Suspicion is most often useless pain.

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.

Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.

I could never be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as mortals.

It is a brave thing to have courage to be an individual; it is also, perhaps, a lonely thing. But it is better than not being an individual, which is to be nobody at all.

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.