Samuel Johnson

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

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

What is the reason that women servants ... have much lower wages than men servants ... when in fact our female house servants work much harder than the male?

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

Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.

Self-love is often rather arrogant than blind; it does not hide our faults from ourselves, but persuades us that they escape the notice of others.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.

Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

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

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.

Ah! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him.

Virtue is too often merely local.

Why, Sir, most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things.

When speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four.

Abstinence is as easy to me, as temperance would be difficult.

You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompense of their labour, than when you give money merely in charity.

Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.

Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed:

Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale.

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.

Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

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

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected, and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be superadded.

Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one.

There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket; a very few names may be considered as perpetual lamps that shine unconsumed.

I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.

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

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.

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

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

Sir, there is more knowledge in a letter of Richardson's, than in all Tom Jones.

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.

Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprized to find it done at all.

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.

I deny the lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of alarming him. You have no business with consequences; you are to tell the truth.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.