Samuel Johnson

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

Knowledge always demands increase; it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but will afterwards always propagate itself.

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

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.

Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

Who then is free? The wise man who can command himself.

Riches are for spending.

In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is – Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity, custom, and fear.

I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

When I look back on all the worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.

For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.

At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man walking into the little booth with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. No amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point.

If someone betrays you once, it’s their fault; if they betray you twice, it’s your fault.