Samuel Johnson

If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.

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.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

The luster of diamonds is invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a picture are created by the shades; the highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue.

Knowledge always demands increase; it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but will afterwards always propagate itself.

Sir, I have found you an argument. I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.

Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?

Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change thing I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

He has the deed half done who has made a beginning.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity.

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!

Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father’s wisdom than he who has a great deal left him does to his father’s care.

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.