Samuel Johnson

Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.

Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate.

Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.

It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

Silence is not always tact, but it is tact that is golden, not silence.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it come to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

You are all fundamentalists with a top dressing of science. That is why you are the stupidest of conservatives and reactionists in politics and the most bigoted of obstructionists in science itself. When it comes to getting a move on you are all of the same opinion: stop it, flog it, hang it, dynamite it, stamp it out.

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being.

Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.

I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them.

Cure the disease and kill the patient.

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.

They have a right to censure that have a heart to help: the rest is cruelty, not justice.