Samuel Johnson

Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a gray one.

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.

Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience. You will find it a calamity.

It seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.

Take away the danger and remove the restraint, and wayward nature runs free.

Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child’s rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man’s whore.

Hurricanes are named after people, baby, and I hope you know that falling in love with me will be so much more treacherous than boarding up the windows and waiting for me to pass.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

Work is always an antidote to depression.

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.