Samuel Johnson

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

I know not any thing more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.

A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.

I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.

Poverty is often concealed in splendor, and often in extravagance. It is the task of many people to conceal their neediness from others. Consequently they support themselves by temporary means, and everyday is lost in contriving for tomorrow.

The test of a man or woman’s breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

Logic is a poor guide compared with custom.

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.

A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world is the highest applause.

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

I have thought of a pulley to raise me gradually; but that would give me pain, as it would counteract my natural inclination. I would have something that can dissipate the inertia and give elasticity to the muscles. We can heat the body, we can cool it; we can give it tension or relaxation; and surely it is possible to bring it into a state in which rising from bed will not be a pain.

It’s powerful to have strong men but what does that strength mean?

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.

It were Happy if we studied Nature more in natural Things; and acted according to Nature; whose rules are few, plain and most reasonable.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?