Samuel Johnson

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.

It seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.

I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem.

It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you.

We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a belly-full of words and do not know a thing. The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means of education.

Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and the water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.

I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, ‘Verify your quotations.’

Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.

Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

Avoid inquisitive persons, for they are sure to be gossips, their ears are open to hear, but they will not keep what is entrusted to them.

Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends.

If you miss the present moment, you miss your appointment with life. That is very serious!

When the desire ain’t on me I don’t need help. When it is on me I don’t want any. See? Like the old fellah that never mended his roof. Said on a wet day he couldn’t do it and on a dry day it was as good as anybody’s.