Samuel Johnson

Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.

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.

Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

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 who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

I am not able to instruct you. I can only tell that I have chosen wrong. I have passed my time in study without experience; in the attainment of sciences which can, for the most part, be but remotely useful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the expense of all the common comforts of life: I have missed the endearing elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of domestic tenderness.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.

Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.

A fly may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self?

Prejudice not being funded on reason cannot be removed by argument.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give.

It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.