Samuel Johnson

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

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

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.

A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.

I am a great friend to public amusements; for they keep people from vice.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

No man was ever great by imitation.