Samuel Johnson

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own.

You can't be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who's for you and who's against you.

Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.

Exercise is labor without weariness.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.

Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little danger.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

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

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.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

He that undervalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.

Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and... the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

What is easy is seldom excellent.

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

There are charms made only for distant admiration.

A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.

When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.

Language is the dress of thought.

No man was ever great by imitation.

My dear friend, clear your mind of can't.

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.

Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.

To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern... No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.

By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.