Samuel Johnson

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

“What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.”

“Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.”

“Your manuscript is both good and original but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.”

“The world is seldom what it seems to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.”

“It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.”

“Exercise is labor without weariness.”

“The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef love, like being enlivened with champagne.”

“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.”

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”

“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.”

“Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.”

“Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.”

“A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.”

“There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.”

“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.”

“Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and... the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.”

“No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.”

“Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.”

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

“If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.”

“The true art of memory is the art of attention.”

“Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.”

“It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.”