Keeping accounts, sir, is of no use when a man is spending his own money, and has nobody to whom he is to account. You won't eat less beef today because you have written down what it cost yesterday.
Samuel JohnsonThere is something in obstinacy which differs from every other passion. Whenever it fails, it never recovers, but either breaks like iron, or crumbles sulkily away, like a fractured arch. Most other passions have their periods of fatigue and rest, their sufferings and their cure; but obstinacy has no resource, and the first wound is mortal.
Samuel JohnsonNo man can have much kindness for him by whom he does not believe himself esteemed, and nothing so evidently proves esteem as imitation.
Samuel Johnson