Samuel Johnson

What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written.

He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.

What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it; for folly doesn’t deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect.

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.

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

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

So many fail because they don’t get started – they don’t go. They don’t overcome inertia. They don’t begin.

Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

You’ve got to have a good spirit on the inside. That’s what’s really going to make you look like you’re ready to rock the world.

With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years.

Give, even if you only have little.

We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together, and if we are to live together we have to talk.

If you are really thankful, what do you do? You share.

Go fish and hunt far and wide day by day – farther and wider – and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.

As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.

No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.