Samuel Johnson

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

He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good and evil; and with whom he could set his mind at liberty, to retrace the past or anticipate the future. The continuity of being is lacerated; the settled course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless.

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

Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.

I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark.

No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others, will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excites our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten.

Whatever advice you give, be short.

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

Follow your own passion – not your parents’, not your teachers’- yours.

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven’t started wondering about yet.

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

Then I realized that secrecy is actually to the detriment of my own peace of mind and self, and that I could still sustain my belief in privacy and be authentic and transparent at the same time. It was a pretty revelatory moment, and there’s been a liberating force that’s come from it.

Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.

The Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa….Leonardo had eye trouble….Art couldn’t explain it….But now we’re safe, since science can explain it. Maybe Milton wrote Paradise Lost because he was blind? And Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony because he was deaf…

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.

If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sun beams and you will always look lovely!

Every burned book enlightens the world.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.