Samuel Johnson

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.

The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.

No one ever became great by imitation.

A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them.

There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.

The soul of God is poured into the world through the thoughts of men.

The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.

The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?

If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

If a man’s eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

Consequences are unpitying.

Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?

In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

Mountains will go into labour, and a silly little mouse will be born.