Samuel Johnson

For who is pleased with himself.

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

All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.

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

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.

Every other enjoyment malice may destroy; every other panegyric envy may withhold; but no human power can deprive the boaster of his own encomiums.

These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.

Worthless people love only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.

Fidelity has enfranchised slaves, and adopted servants to be sons.

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.

By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.

The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.

God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.

The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.

Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

Nothing is black or white.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.