Samuel Johnson

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

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.

Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time, of that time which never can return.

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.

Man is not weak; knowledge is more than equivalent to force.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, ‘Verify your quotations.’

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.

I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning’s greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.

You have to choose between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.

Any government is free to the people under it (whatever be the frame) where the law rules, and the people are a party to those laws, and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy, or confusion.

If a man’s eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.

The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.

By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved or undeserved.

We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.

Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.

He walked out into the cold morning asking himself this heretical question: Can you start measuring a minute at any instant you wish?

The men who have furnished me with my greatest inspiration have not been men of wealth, but men of deeds.