Samuel Johnson

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.

Poverty is often concealed in splendor, and often in extravagance. It is the task of many people to conceal their neediness from others. Consequently they support themselves by temporary means, and everyday is lost in contriving for tomorrow.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale.

Exercise is labor without weariness.

I am not able to instruct you. I can only tell that I have chosen wrong. I have passed my time in study without experience; in the attainment of sciences which can, for the most part, be but remotely useful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the expense of all the common comforts of life: I have missed the endearing elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of domestic tenderness.

We cannot see things that stare us in the face until the hour comes that the mind is ripened.

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

A physician’s physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric’s divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.

If they had not landed there would be some reason for celebrating the fact.

A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of beauty.

The stars are the apexes of what triangles!

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.

Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t.

If you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.

If you shoot at a king you must kill him.

The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man’s intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man’s self a fair retreat: for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought.