Samuel Johnson

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.

He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good and evil; and with whom he could set his mind at liberty, to retrace the past or anticipate the future. The continuity of being is lacerated; the settled course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless.

Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favorable to virtue. Remember that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad.

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

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

God is better served in resisting a Temptation to Evil, than in many formal Prayers.

Do something every day that you don’t want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools.

The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is – Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity, custom, and fear.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

The nose of the bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go.

Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.

What a new face courage puts on everything!

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Rebellions of the belly are the worst.

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourself.

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.