Samuel Johnson

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

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

You should always own a black dress because no one ever remembers a black dress.

If we are but sure the end is right, we are too apt to gallop over all bounds to compass it; not considering the lawful ends may be very unlawfully attained.

There is always room for a person of force and they make room for many.

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God’s pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.

Courage: the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

We must beware of trying to build a society in which nobody counts for anything except a politician or an official, a society where enterprise gains no reward and thrift no privileges.

The virtue in most request is conformity.

This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put.

They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.