Samuel Johnson

It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.

You can’t be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who’s for you and who’s against you.

The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.

No man was ever great by imitation.

We are inclined to believe those whom we don not know because they have never deceived us.

Many heroes lived before Agamemnon; but all are unknown and unwept, extinguished in everlasting night, because they have no spirited chronicler.

Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

Nothing does more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.

Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans –which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.

In the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am – unbound.

Humility like the darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.

Usually the modest person passes for someone reserved, the silent for a sullen person.

I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.

When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it.

Stress is caused by being here but wanting to be there.

Our virtues are dearer to us the more we have had to suffer for them. It is the same with our children. All profound affection entertains a sacrifice. Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better.