Samuel Johnson

There is no temper more unpropitious to interest than desultory application and unlimited inquiry, by which the desires are held in a perpetual equipoise, and the mind fluctuates between different purposes without determination.

The friendship which is to be practised or expected by common mortals, must take its rise from mutual pleasure, and must end when the power ceases of delighting each other.

From ignorance our comfort flows, the only wretched are the wise

I respect Millar, sir: he has raised the price of literature.

Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, the midnight murderer bursts the faithless bar; invades the sacred hour of silent rest and leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast.

To fix the thoughts by writing, and subject them to frequent examinations and reviews, is the best method of enabling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practices on others

The present time is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.

I have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch and tumbling into it

Confidence is a plant of slow growth; especially in an aged bosom

When a man marries a widow his jealousies revert to the past: no man is as good as his wife says her first husband was

We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures

Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.

A merchant may, perhaps, be a man of an enlarged mind, but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind.

The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.

Every man is of importance to himself.

It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful.

How small of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place consigned, Our own felicity we make or find. With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.

I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.

There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.

It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

Philips, whose touch harmonious could remove The pangs of guilty power and hapless love! Rest here, distress'd by poverty no more; Here find that calm thou gav'st so oft before; Sleep undisturb'd within this peaceful shrine, Till angels wake thee with a note like thine!