Samuel Johnson

To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.

Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.

A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.

All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.

An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay, And glides in modest innocence away.

Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.

Happiness," said he, "must be something solid and permanent, without fear and without uncertainty.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

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

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.

The world is not yet exhausted: let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.

The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it.

I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom.

We are told, that the black bear is innocent; but I should not like to trust myself with him.

All imposture weakens confidence and chills benevolence.

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

Those that have done nothing in life, are not qualified to judge of those that have done little