Samuel Johnson

He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things they denote.

Whatever you have spend less.

Sorrow is the rust of the soul and activity will cleanse and brighten it.

You can’t be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who’s for you and who’s against you.

Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey than others, and detected faults and follies which escape vulgar observation.

No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference.

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.

She has taken a patronizing fancy to her father, the Admiral, who accepts her condescension gratefully as age brings more and more home to him the futility of his social position.

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.

A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as this brain.

All I want to do is change the world.

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.

It is natural to die as to be born.

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.

The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished.

Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence.