Samuel Johnson

It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend.

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

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

Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience. You will find it a calamity.

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

Though wisdom cannot be gotten for gold, still less can be gotten without it.

My prison shall be my grave before I will budge a jot; for I owe my conscience to no mortal man.

PATIENCE YOU MUST HAVE my young padawan.

Every wall is a door.

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Revolutions are always verbose.

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.

It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

The Country is both the Philosopher’s Garden and his Library, in which he Reads and Contemplates the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

If anyone were to ask me what I want out of life I would say- the opportunity for doing something useful, for in no other way, I am convinced, can true happiness be attained.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it.