Samuel Johnson

Sir, a man may be so much of everything, that he is nothing of anything.

Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.

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.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.

Every other enjoyment malice may destroy; every other panegyric envy may withhold; but no human power can deprive the boaster of his own encomiums.

The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.

We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass.

The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature.

Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.

The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.

He is great who confers the most benefits.

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lift human life above the level of farce and give it some of the grace of tragedy.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion’s roar.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

Events tend to recur in cycles.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.

In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not; the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.