Samuel Johnson

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

Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

No man was ever great by imitation.

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

Exercise is labor without weariness.

If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.

At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

She is but half a wife that is not, nor is capable of being, a friend.

Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.

Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.

Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.

Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.

The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation, and from the mass of the nation only – not from its privileged classes.

Round numbers are always false.

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

When setting out on a journey, do not seek advice from those who have never left home.

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.