Samuel Johnson

Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.

our triumphant age of plenty is riddled with darker feelings of doubt, cynicism, distrust, boredom and a strange kind of emptiness

There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.

Perhaps the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in a few words.We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered; and he may therefore be justly numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to recur habitually to the mind.

Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly!

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

[C]ourage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings." Samuel Johnson

Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye, and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we leave behind us is always lessening, and that which we approach increasing in magnitude.

In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible. [on hearing a famous violinist]

The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.

You can never be wise unless you love reading.

Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired.

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

I know not why any one but a schoolboy in his declamation should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another.