Samuel Johnson

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

In a man’s letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.

Some people wave their dogmatic thinking until their own reason is entangled.

Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.

She is but half a wife that is not, nor is capable of being, a friend.

No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.

The eloquent man is he who is no eloquent speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

I could not find the world if I searched ten years. I’ve forgotten the road by which I came.

Nothing is black or white.

Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

Security will produce danger.

A Man in Business must put up many Affronts, if he loves his own Quiet.

Intellectual work is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward.

The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

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

I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.

We need not worry so much about what man descends from; it’s what he descends to that shames the human race.