Samuel Johnson

I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces.

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

I was a freethinker before I knew how to think.

Revenge is the act of passion, vengeance is an act of justice.

Syllables govern the world.

They are decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.

This is the foundation of all. We are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover, what nature does or may be made to do.

Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.

All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

The natural law of inertia: Matter will remain at rest or continue in uniform motion in the same straight line unless acted upon by some external force.