Samuel Johnson

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

"He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts."

You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument.

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

There can be no friendship without confidence and no confidence without integrity.

The best of conversations occur when there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm quiet interchange of sentiments.

Read over your compositions and, when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

Sir, no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

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.

A man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly to it.