Samuel Johnson

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

Turn on the prudent ant thy heedful eyes. Observe her labors, sluggard, and be wise.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

When you’re first figuring yourself out, you care so much about what people think of you.

He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father’s wisdom than he who has a great deal left him does to his father’s care.

If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.

He hates chess. He says it is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something clever when they are only wasting their time.

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget…

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

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.

The only prudence in life is concentration.

Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art.

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.