Samuel Johnson

It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination.

A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them.

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

Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible.

Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.

That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem.

Men are respectable only as they respect.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.

I want to be all used up when I die.

All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.

Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ’em to match the men.

Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found; and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

A man’s style is his mind’s voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.

Travel is a fools paradise.

The colleges, while they provide us with libraries, furnish no professors of books; and I think no chair is so much needed.

What is easy is seldom excellent.