Samuel Johnson

Prejudice not being funded on reason cannot be removed by argument.

The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.

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

Knowledge is more than equivalent to force.

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

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

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.

Language is the dress of thought.

Wherever work is done, victory is attained.

Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.

My prison shall be my grave before I will budge a jot; for I owe my conscience to no mortal man.

Consequences are unpitying.

A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman’s life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul’s highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills.

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.

Avoid flatterers, for they are thieves in disguise.

Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.

Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

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