Samuel Johnson

Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

If I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him.

Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

The late M. Venizelos observed that in all her wars Englandhe should have said Britain, of coursealways wins one battlethe last.

Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice.

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

I think a compliment ought to always precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous and gentle reception.

Our own life has to be our message.

Blame is safer than praise.

He who is upright in his way of life and free from sin.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — `Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

True godliness does not turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it and excites their endeavors to mend it.

Security will produce danger.

Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it.

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.

All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.

What you don’t do can be a destructive force.