Samuel Johnson

Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.

Round numbers are always false.

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

Love is only one of many passions.

Justice though moving with tardy pace, has seldom failed to overtake the wicked in their flight.

Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.

Only poetry inspires poetry.

No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.

As to conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I have not a very high opinion of that course.

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.

No matter how often you are defeated, you are born to victory.

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

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing: character, conduct, and capacity are everything. There would be great people and ordinary people and little people, but the great would always be those who had done great things, and never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled them and whose fathers had left them a hundred thousand a year; and the little would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always in favor of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favor of equality.

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

The one who prosperity takes too much delight in will be the most shocked by reverses.