The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken. – Samuel Johnson
A short letter to a distant friend is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation — a proof of unwillingness to do much, even where there is a necessity of doing something. – Samuel Johnson
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef love, like being enlivened with champagne. – Samuel Johnson
Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness, of captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable. – Samuel Johnson
One of the deepest impulses in man is the impulse to record, – to scratch a drawing on a tusk or keep a diary, to collect sagas and heap cairns. This instinct as to the enduring value of the past is, one might say, the very basis of civilization. – John Jay Chapman, Memories and Milestones