Samuel Johnson

I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.

There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.

The greatest gift is the ability to forget – to forget the bad things and focus on the good.

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.

Sense never fails to give them that have it, Words enough to make them understood. It too often happens in some conversations, as in Apothecary Shops, that those Pots that are Empty, or have Things of small Value in them, are as gaudily Dress’d as those that are full of precious Drugs. They that soar too high, often fall hard, making a low and level Dwelling preferable. The tallest Trees are most in the Power of the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune. Buildings have need of a good Foundation, that lie so much exposed to the Weather.

He that does good for good’s sake seeks neither paradise nor reward, but he is sure of both in the end.

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air. It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog’s life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.

Hasty resolutions are of the nature of vows, and to be equally avoided

Those who cross the sea change only the climate, not their character.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

The secret of culture is to learn, that a few great points steadily reappear.

It is by the goodness of God that we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

At the end of my life, with just one breath left, if you come, I’ll sit up and sing.

To think is to practice brain chemistry.