Samuel Johnson

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

Words are but the signs of ideas.

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.