Samuel Johnson

I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

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.

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.

Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.

Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his work and in that work he does what he wants to do.

I know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection; and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is no part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.

None of the affections have been noted to fascinate and bewitch but envy.

The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

There was never a century nor a country that was short of experts who knew the Deity’s mind and were willing to reveal it.

If you want to get what you want give up being right.

He may justly be numbered among the benefactors of mankind, who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may early be impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to occur habitually to the mind.

The angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendor of beneficence.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.