B.S. Johnson Quotes

She had nothing in this world but her two hands and her crazy love for Jesus, who seemed, for his part, never to have heard of her.

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

Labor, if it were not necessary for existence, would be indispensable for the happiness of man.

It is our first duty to serve society.

Self-love is often rather arrogant than blind; it does not hide our faults from ourselves, but persuades us that they escape the notice of others.

The necessities of our condition require a thousand offices of tenderness, which mere regard for the species will never dictate.

Giving up represents a choice you make when you decide not to take action on something over which you actually do have control.

If you want to grow, you must learn to let go.

Although most of us realize what we control and do not control, we live as though we do not really know, and in some cases we spend years focusing on things we cannot control.

Your behavior is based on your beliefs, and what you do and say, over and over again, helps develop your habits.

One of the amusements of idleness is reading without fatigue of close attention; and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read.

Your destiny is in your hands. Creating the life you want is only, and always, up to you.

This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.

Golf is a game in which you claim the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood.

He who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectation, or has any other effect than that of producing a moral sentence or peevish exclamation.

Those whose abilities or knowledge incline them most to deviate from the general round of life are recalled from eccentricity by the laws of their existence.

To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a delicious employment of the poets

Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.

Greece appears to be the fountain of knowledge; Rome of elegance

In order to grow, you must learn to let go and strive toward something greater.

Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.

I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom.

People have now a-days got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do as much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken.

Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.

Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.

Courtesy and good-humour are often found with little real worth.

We have now learned that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking credit; let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily restrained from giving it.

For patience, sov'reign o'er transmuted ill.

Don't get too caught up in making money or having a job, get excited about the fact that you can design your life.

Catch, then, oh! catch the transient hour, Improve each moment as it flies; Life's a short summer-man a flower; He dies-alas! how soon he dies!

Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, roll darkly down the torrent of his fate.

Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance.

No, Sir, you will have much more influence by giving or lending money where it is wanted, than by hospitality.

Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults.

I studied a lot of Foghorn Leghorn.

Even though some of the films I've made haven't been particularly commercial, I don't find them failures.

Health is so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly.

He said that few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forgo the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive how to fill the interval between dinner and supper.

I try to parent equally, but I think little girls are a little more sensitive.

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow.

If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

I'd love to do a live record, I'd love to do an acoustic record, I'm already thinking about what I may want to do with the next studio record.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.

In my opinion, if you buy a ticket to see me you're buying experience. People don't want to see me stand there and play guitar, they want to party with us.

Where there is no difficulty there is no praise.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.