Samuel Johnson

There are occasions on which all apology is rudeness.

Friendship is seldom lasting but between equals, or where the superiority on one side is reduced by some equivalent advantage on the other.

Let him that desires to see others happy, make haste to give while his gift can be enjoyed, and remember that every moment of delay takes away something from the value of his benefaction.

Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.

Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale.

When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.

God Himself, sir, does not propose to judge a man until his life is over. Why should you and I?

The vicious count their years; virtuous, their acts.

Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself.

That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not only be equal virtue on each part, but virtue of the same kind; not only the same end must be proposed, but the same means must be approved by both.

He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.

When female minds are embittered by age or solitude, their malignity is generally exerted in a rigorous and spiteful superintendence of domestic trifles.

Of all the grief's that harass the distressed; sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.

No mind is much employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

He was so generally civil, that nobody thanked him for it.

The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.

It is not uncommon to charge the difference between promise and performance, between profession and reality, upon deep design and studied deceit; but the truth is, that there is very little hypocrisy in the world.