There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either. – Samuel Johnson
I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark. – Samuel Johnson
There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets. – Samuel Johnson
Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most. – Samuel Johnson
What was once called the objective world is a sort of Rorschach ink blot, into which each culture, each system of science and religion, each type of personality, reads a meaning only remotely derived from the shape and color of the blot itself. – Lewis Mumford, “Orientation to Life,” The Conduct of Life, 1951