Samuel Johnson

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

If, sir, men were all virtuous, I should with great alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be the security of the good if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the clouds neither wall, nor mountains, nor seas could afford any security.

The drama's laws the drama's patrons give._x000D_ _x000D_ For we that live to please must please to live.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

That we must all die, we always knew, I wish I had sooner remembred it.

Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.

Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.

Justice is indispensably and universally necessary, and what is necessary must always be limited, uniform, and distinct

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

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.

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

For life affords no higher pleasure, than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified. He that labours in any great or laudable undertaking, has his fatigues first supported by hope, and afterwards rewarded by joy... To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

Language is the dress of thought.

It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.

The uniform necessities of human nature produce in a great measure uniformity of life, and for part of the day make one place like another; to dress and to undress, to eat and to sleep, are the same in London as in the country.

Sir, you must not neglect doing a thing immediately good from fear of remote evil; - from fear of its being abused.

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Every advance into knowledge opens new prospects, and produces new incitements to farther progress.

We seldom learn the true want of what we have till it is discovered that we can have no more.

The disturbers of our happiness, in this world, are our desires, our griefs, and our fears.