Samuel Johnson

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

Count on it, if a person talks of their misfortune, there is something in it that is not disagreeable to them.

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.

Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.

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

Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.

I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.

Important encounters are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other.

Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.

We never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead – and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead and then they would be honest so much earlier.

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

What a lot of things there are a man can do without.

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

Who can guess how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision.

I do not like work even when someone else does it.

My finger can point to the moon, but my finger is not the moon. You don’t have to become my finger, nor do you have to worship my finger. You have to forget my finger, and look at where it is pointing.

Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.