Samuel Johnson

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Ah! Sir, a boy’s being flogged is not so severe as a man’s having the hiss of the world against him.

Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.

Exercise is labor without weariness.

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.

A wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. He’ll beat you all at piety.

If you have nothing to say, say nothing.

Suspicion is most often useless pain.

The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.

Never marry but for love; but see that thou lovest what is lovely.

Recognize the ego for what it is: a collective dysfunction, the insanity of the human mind.

If someone betrays you once, it’s their fault; if they betray you twice, it’s your fault.

If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.

The most dangerous thing is illusion.

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.

Let him that would move the world, first move himself.

The early Christian rules of life were not made to last, because the early Christians did not believe that the world itself was going to last.

Some of your grief you have cured, and lived to survive; but what torments of pain have you endured that haven’t as yet arrived.

A sect or party is an incognito devised to save man from the vexation of thinking.

There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.