Samuel Johnson

The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.

If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.

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

Among the calamities of war, may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.

For who is pleased with himself.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend.

No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.

Whatever limits us we call fate.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

It is only through labour and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage; that we move on to better things.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Fortune knocks at every man’s door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her.

The drama’s laws, the drama’s patrons give, for we that live to please, must please to live.

There is only one thing about which I shall have no regrets when my life ends. I have savored to the full all the small, daily joys. The bright sunshine on the breakfast table; the smell of the air at dusk; the sound of the clock ticking; the light rains that start gently after midnight; the hour when the family come home; Sunday-evening tea before the fire! I have never missed one moment of beauty, not even taken it for granted. Spring, summer, autumn, or winter. I wish I had failed as little in other ways.

By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature.

Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding.