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My dear friend, clear your mind of can't.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
Teacher
Translator
Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Friend
Clear
Mind
Complacency
Dear

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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.
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In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much owing to the good opinion of mankind.
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If I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him.
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Of riches it is not necessary to write the praise. Let it, however, be remembered that he who has money to spare has it always in his power to benefit others, and of such power a good man must always be desirous.
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We never do anything consciously for the last time without sadness of heart.
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As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles.
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When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.
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Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.
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A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries.
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Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits the other recreates and revives them.
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When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.
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To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.
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As a madman is apt to think himself grown suddenly great, so he that grows suddenly great is apt to borrow a little from the madman.
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Good-humor is a state between gayety and unconcern,--the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another.
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Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.
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It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.
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The civilities of the great are never thrown away.
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I soon found that wit, like every other power, has its boundaries that its success depends upon the aptitude of others to receive impressions and that as some bodies, indissoluble by heat, can set the furnace and crucible at defiance, there are min
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All industry must be excited by hope.
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But to the particular species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and emulation.
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