Samuel Johnson

I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces.

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.

He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

My dear friend, clear your mind of cant [excessive thought]. You may talk as other people do: you may say to a man, Sir, I am your most humble servant. You are not his most humble servant. You may say, These are bad times; it is a melancholy thing to be reserved to such times. You don’t mind the times … You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in Society; but don’t think foolishly.

Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay to an author.

The greatest man in history was the poorest.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man walking into the little booth with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. No amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point.

Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Children are all foreigners.

There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.

He is rich who is content with the least; for contentment is the wealth of nature.

How earthy old people become moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.

That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem.

I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

He who would begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.

If it be an evil to judge rashly or untruly any single man, how much a greater sin it is to condemn a whole people.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.