Samuel Johnson

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark.

His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.

Wise men are not wise at all hours, and will speak five times from their taste or their humor, to once from their reason.

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.

The key to every man is his thought. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

To be good is noble, but to teach others how to be good is nobler and less trouble.

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful-while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.

The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.

The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is – Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity, custom, and fear.

Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

I have had to learn that my voice has value. And if I don’t use it, what’s the point of being in the room?

A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.