Samuel Johnson

If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.

Flattery pleases very generally. In the first place, the flatterer may think what he says to be true; but, in the second place, whether he thinks so or not, he certainly thinks those whom he flatters of consequence enough to be flattered.

Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men.

Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.

Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect.

Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. he whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.

It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy unenvied, to be healthful without physic, and secure without a guard; to obtain from the bounty of nature, what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of artists and attendants, of flatterers and spies.

He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.

The majority have no other reason for their opinions than that they are the fashion.

Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic.

Golf is a game in which you claim the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood.

The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.

Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself

Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean advantages.

Worth seeing, yes; but not worth going to see.

That all who are happy are equally happy is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. A small drinking glass and a large one may be equally full, but the large one holds more than the small.

The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things-the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.

The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment.

He who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectation, or has any other effect than that of producing a moral sentence or peevish exclamation.

The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.

Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured.