Samuel Johnson

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

No two men can be half an hour together but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

To expect that the intricacies of science will be pierced by a careless glance, or the eminences of fame ascended without labour, is to expect a peculiar privilege, a power denied to the rest of mankind; but to suppose that the maze is inscrutable to diligence, or the heights inaccessible to perseverance, is to submit tamely to the tyranny of fancy, and enchain the mind in voluntary shackles.

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned… a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

Those who cannot tell what they desire or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast wishes.

God’s first creature, which was light.

Gratitude is a debt which usually goes on accumulating like blackmail; the more you pay, the more is exacted. In time, you are made to realize that the kindness done you is become a curse and you wish it had not happened.

The money men make lives after them.

Tis admirable to consider, how Powerful the Kings are, yet they move by the Breath of their People.

I have not a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming vices.

Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability.

Have wholesome, but not costly Food, and be rather cleanly than dainty in ordering it.

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.

There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.

Better see rightly on a pound a week than squint on a million.

A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

My emancipation don’t fit your equation.