Samuel Johnson

Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor.

More knowledge may be gained of a man’s real character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral.

He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.

Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

Every man’s work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.

I mean why should somebody go steal and break the law to get all they can when there’s always some law where you can be legal and get it all anyway!

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.

Dare to think for yourself.