Samuel Johnson

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children.

Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.

Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

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.

If you value a man’s regard, strive with him. As to liking, you like your newspaper – and despise it.

Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it.

Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget…

Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet. To hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity is their livelihood

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

It took me twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public.

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, an they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.

Business is the salt of life.

Froth at the top, dregs at bottom, but the middle excellent.

That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.

The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

It is a happy talent to know how to play.