Samuel Johnson

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

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

All I want to do is change the world.

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

Who has not felt the beauty of a woman’s arm? The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied gently-lessening curves, down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness.

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change thing I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

It is possible to be free and loving no matter what your circumstances.

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don’t be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning Good morning at total strangers.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice.

The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.

What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.

Plenty of times I wanted to haul off when somebody insulted me for the color of my skin, but I had to hold to myself. I knew I was kind of an experiment. The whole thing was bigger than me.

I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.