Samuel Johnson

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found; and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression.

Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.

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

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things they denote.

Wise men make more opportunities than they find.

In the long run you hit only what you aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had better aim at something high.

He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.

Fidelity has enfranchised slaves, and adopted servants to be sons.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?

Acorns were good until bread was found.

Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.

The jealous are troublesome to others, but torment to themselves.

Liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without liberty is slavery.

What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real.