Samuel Johnson

There is nothing so much seduces reason from vigilance as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman in marriage.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

Ah! Sir, a boy’s being flogged is not so severe as a man’s having the hiss of the world against him.

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

Glances of true beauty can be seen in the faces of those who live in true meekness.

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.

Wives are young men’s mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men’s nurses.

Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

It’s not burn baby burn, but learn, baby, learn, so that you can earn, baby, earn.

The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

Pale death with an impartial foot knocks at the hovels of the poor and the palaces of king.

Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.