Samuel Johnson

The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket; a very few names may be considered as perpetual lamps that shine unconsumed.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity… The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found; and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.

Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to be quite true.

At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is to prepare for the long haul, the rise and fall, and let neither define your sense of self.

To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations.

Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

They change their climate, not their soul, who rush across the sea.

Love grows. Lust wastes by Enjoyment, and the Reason is, that one springs from an Union of Souls, and the other from an Union of Sense.

Security will produce danger.

They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?

My finger can point to the moon, but my finger is not the moon. You don’t have to become my finger, nor do you have to worship my finger. You have to forget my finger, and look at where it is pointing.

Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.