Samuel Johnson

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Some people wave their dogmatic thinking until their own reason is entangled.

It is very natural for young men to be vehement, acrimonious and severe. For as they seldom comprehend at once all the consequences of a position, or perceive the difficulties by which cooler and more experienced reasoners are restrained from confidence, they form their conclusions with great precipitance. Seeing nothing that can darken or embarrass the question, they expect to find their own opinion universally prevalent, and are inclined to impute uncertainty and hesitation to want of honesty, rather than of knowledge.

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

A wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. He’ll beat you all at piety.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

I will never do this, says one, yet does it: I am resolved to do this, says another; but flags upon second Thoughts: Or does it, tho’ awkwardly, for his Word’s sake: As if it were worse to break his Word, than to do amiss in keeping it.

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.

Children demand that their heroes should be freckleless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.

If we want maturity, we have to be mature. If we want a nation that feels hopeful, then we have to speak in hopeful terms… We have to model what we want.

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.

We don’t want people to have expectations of us, but then we have expectations of everybody else.

The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.

When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.

There must be what Mr. Gladstone many years ago called a blessed act of oblivion. We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward across the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past.

Believe that each day that shines on you is your last.

While fools shun one set of faults they run into the opposite one.

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Cities give us collision. ‘Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.

Every mind has a choice between truth and repose. Take which you please you can never have both.