Samuel Johnson

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

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.

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

Boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences whence it is bad in council though good in execution.

He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.

Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

A hen is only a egg’s way of making another egg.

Laughter is the greatest weapon we have and we, as humans, use it the least.

Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.

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.

I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.

Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him.

Count on it, if a person talks of their misfortune, there is something in it that is not disagreeable to them.

Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

Don’t be a hard rock when you really are a gem!