Samuel Johnson

Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great.

The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England.

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.

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.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.

It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.

Without friends the world is but a wilderness. There is no man that imparteth his joys to his friends, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his grieves to his friend, but he grieveth the less.

I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.

A nap, my friend, is a brief period of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavor to entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures.

What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness.

It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.

If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.

Your mind will enchain you. Your heart will set you free.

I was a freethinker before I knew how to think.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

New arts destroy the old.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

While fools shun one set of faults they run into the opposite one.

So different are the colors of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past; and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.