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

The composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelting to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp,...

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

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

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.

The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

our triumphant age of plenty is riddled with darker feelings of doubt, cynicism, distrust, boredom and a strange kind of emptiness

In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.”(On the Bravery of the English Common Soldiers)

The Irish are a fair people- they never speak well of one another

Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.

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

Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.

Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerales.

It is necessary to hope… for hope itself is happiness.

You can never be wise unless you love reading.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty

My congratulations to you, sir. 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.

Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.

a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has, for twenty years, diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evening, with...

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.

There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not know it.

What’, said he, ‘ makes the difference between man and all the rest of the animal creation? Every beast that strays beside me has the same corporeal necessities with myself; he is hungry and crops...

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.

Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.