Samuel Johnson

There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.

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 drama’s laws, the drama’s patrons give, for we that live to please, must please to live.

Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes, than a public library.

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.

How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

Your playing small does not serve the world. Who are you not to be great?

Remember who you are.

You are now fixed at the mercy of no governor that comes to make his fortune great; you shall be governed by laws of your own making and live a free, and if you will, a sober and industrious life. I shall not usurp the right of any, or oppress his person. God has furnished me with a better resolution and has given me his grace to keep it.

The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.

Fame is proof that the people are gullible.

In failing circumstances no one can be relied on to keep their integrity.