Samuel Johnson

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.

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.

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

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.

It is necessary to hope… for hope itself is happiness.

A wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. He’ll beat you all at piety.

Get a black suit and just freeload, problem it’s too God damned late now even to be any of the things I never wanted to be.

Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.

As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!

If you have inner peace, nobody can force you to be a slave to the outer reality.

Lilac anemone, paper petals, turning tentatively to face a pale sun opening to reveal a lightness of being, a flash of gold, a fresh resilience, contented silence, the dawn of a new day.

Few sinners are saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.

We had the sky up there, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they was made or just happened.

All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of story-tellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

When I look back on all the worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.

Most of the shadows of life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.

Give no bounties: make equal laws: secure life and prosperity and you need not give alms.

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.

When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before.

Kings in this should imitate God, their mercy should be above their works.