B.S. Johnson Quotes

I've refined my mechanics, refined my pitches. I've gotten more confidence, and I've gotten more determination. I've got a better idea what I'm doing out there.

Be yourself, build meaningful relationships, follow your dreams.

If you hear an old parable and you don't believe it, it's mythology. If you hear an old parable and you believe it, it's religion.

It is not the legitimate province of the Legislature to determine which religion is true, or what false. Our government is a civil, and not a religious institution.

Our Constitution recognises no other power than that of persuasion, for enforcing religious observances.

I been studyin' the rain and I'm 'on drive my blues away.

I got ramblin', I got ramblin' on my mind. I got ramblin', I got ramblin' all on my mind. Hate to leave my baby, but you treats me so unkind.

Beauty, the smile of God, Music, His voice.

Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may be properly charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it.

Every man has some favorite topic of conversation, on which, by a feigned seriousness of attention, he may be drawn to expatiate without end.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.

Pity is not natural to man. Children always are cruel. Savages are always cruel.

The earnings have been pretty good so far, but there's an ambiguity in the market about them, because you'll see Amazon or Microsoft disappointing and then others beating.

No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.

He that wishes to see his country robbed of its rights cannot be a patriot.

Deviation from Nature is deviation from happiness.

I think it's been the topic of conversation for every one... If the U.S. is hit again, how are we going to handle it? Our troops are all over the place.

Writing is a creatively rewarding occupation but for me very time consuming.

I always saw myself as a multi media artist.

The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.

Christ was either the grandest, guiltiest of impostors, by a marvelous and most subtle refinement of wickedness, or He was God manifest in the flesh.

The saddest of all failures is that of a soul, with its capabilities and possibilities, failing of life everlasting, and entering upon that night of death upon which morning never dawns.

There are in every age new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.

If Christianity were only a development, then Christ was not needed. If Christianity were only a scheme of morals, then the divine incarnation was a thing superfluous.

Most people are blinded by faith leaving them unable to see the truth that is science.

I know not any crime so great that a man could contrive to commit as poisoning the sources of eternal truth.

The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another.

The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence.

Employment and hardships prevent melancholy.

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.

The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.

Resentment is a union of sorrow with malignity; a combination of a passion which all endeavor to avoid with a passion which all concur to detest.

A translator is to be like his author; it is not his business to excel him.

Man's chief merit consists in resisting the impulses of his nature.

Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect.

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

I'm folding up my little dreams Within my heart tonight, And praying I may soon forget The torture of their sight.

Is there not a way by which the man who can think can be enabled to have time to think?

Distance either of time or place is sufficient to reconcile weak minds to wonderful relations.

The strong demand, contend, prevail; the beggar is a fool.

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

The history of mankind is little else than a narrative of designs which have failed and hopes that have been disappointed.

These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.

A good wife is like the ivy which beautifies the building to which it clings, twining its tendrils more lovingly as time converts the ancient edifice into a ruin.

London! the needy villain's general home, The common sewer of Paris and of Rome! With eager thirst, by folly or by fate, Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state.

Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy.

Diligence in employments of less consequence is the most successful introduction to greater enterprises.

It is easy for a man who sits idle at home, and has nobody to please but himself, to ridicule or censure the common practices of mankind.

The difference between coarse and refined abuse is the difference between being bruised by a club and wounded by a poisoned arrow.