Samuel Johnson

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.

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

If he really thinks there is no distinction between vice and virtue, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.

Those who attain to any excellence commonly spend life in some single pursuit, for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

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

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found; and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected

In the word of no master am I bound to believe.

It is tact that is golden, not silence.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

Preaching is the expression of moral sentiments applied to the duties of life.

The laws of each are convertible into the laws of any other.

I always feel excited when I can do something that’s about what I believe in.

A sect or party is an incognito devised to save man from the vexation of thinking.

There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Knowledge is power.

On with dance, let joy be unconfined, is my motto; whether there’s any dance to dance or any joy to unconfined.

We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.

Suspicion is most often useless pain.

This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.