Samuel Johnson

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.

Why, Sir, most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned… a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected, and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be super added.

The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

I’m out there to clean the plate. Once they’ve read what I’ve written on a subject, I want them to think, ‘That’s it!’ I think the highest aspiration people in our trade can have is that once they’ve written a story, nobody will ever try it again.

I shall not wholly die, and a great part of me will escape the grave.

Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.

He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a week to twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams; but I look after the drainage.

His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.

The idea of perfection always gives one a chance to talk without knowing facts.

Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they never fly by twilight.

The physical world, including our bodies, is a response of the observer. We create our bodies as we create the experience of our world.

We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list.

Courage is exhilarating.

I wish for you the wisdom to realize that forgiveness has nothing to do with an apology.