Friendship is far more delicate than love. Quarrels and fretful complaints are attractive in the last, offensive in the first. And the very things which heap fewel on the fire of ardent passion, choke and extinguish sober and true regard. On the other hand, time, which is sure to destroy that love of which half certainly depends on desire, is as sure to increase a friendship founded on talents, warm with esteem, and ambitious of success for the object of it.

'Tis never for their wisdom that one loves the wisest, or for their wit that one loves the wittiest; 'tis for benevolence, and virtue, and honest fondness, one loves people...

We look on those approaching the banks of a river all must cross, with ten times the interest they excited when dancing in the meadow.

I am perpetually bringing or losing babies, both very dreadful operations to me, and which tear mind and body both in pieces very cruelly.

I think character never changes; the Acorn becomes an Oak, which is very little like an Acorn to be sure, but it never becomes an Ash.

Friendship is far more delicate than love. Quarrels and fretful complaints are attractive in the last, offensive in the first. And the very things which heap fewel on the fire of ardent passion, choke and extinguish sober and true regard. On the other hand, time, which is sure to destroy that love of which half certainly depends on desire, is as sure to increase a friendship founded on talents, warm with esteem, and ambitious of success for the object of it.

[Samuel] Johnson's conversation was by much too strong for a person accustomed to obsequiousness and flattery; it was mustard in a young child's mouth!