Samuel Johnson

Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

I am not able to instruct you. I can only tell that I have chosen wrong. I have passed my time in study without experience; in the attainment of sciences which can, for the most part, be but remotely useful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the expense of all the common comforts of life: I have missed the endearing elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of domestic tenderness.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world.

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

A man cannot free himself by any self-denying ordinances, neither by water nor potatoes, nor by violent possibilities, by refusing to swear, refusing to pay taxes, by going to jail, or by taking another man’s crops or squatting on his land. By none of these ways can he free himself; no, nor by paying his debts with money; only by obedience to his own genius.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other; given the upper, to find the under side.

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid.

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.

There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out, and hold him to it.

You are now fixed at the mercy of no governor that comes to make his fortune great; you shall be governed by laws of your own making and live a free, and if you will, a sober and industrious life. I shall not usurp the right of any, or oppress his person. God has furnished me with a better resolution and has given me his grace to keep it.

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.