Samuel Johnson
If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.Collection: Alone
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.Collection: Patriotism
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.Collection: Friendship
What is easy is seldom excellent.Collection: Experience
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Happiness
To love one that is great, is almost to be great one's self.Collection: Great
There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.Collection: Happiness
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.Collection: Good
Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.Collection: Patience
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.Collection: Women
He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.Collection: Knowledge
The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.Collection: Morning
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.Collection: Knowledge
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.Collection: Money
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.Collection: Truth
Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.Collection: Marriage
All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.Collection: Travel
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.Collection: Hope
Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.Collection: Equality
No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.Collection: Food
To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.Collection: Home
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.Collection: Knowledge
Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.Collection: Courage
If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.Collection: Great
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.Collection: Truth
Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.Collection: Smile
The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.Collection: Dreams
All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.Collection: Experience
It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.Collection: Equality
Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.Collection: Imagination
Exercise is labor without weariness.Collection: Fitness
He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.Collection: Courage
Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.Collection: Respect
The true art of memory is the art of attention.Collection: Art
Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.Collection: Design
He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.Collection: Nature
The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.Collection: Birthday
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.Collection: Happiness
One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.Collection: Funny
It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.Collection: Time
Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.Collection: Chance
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.Collection: Music
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.Collection: Hope
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.Collection: Imagination
Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.Collection: Friendship
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.Collection: Success
Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.Collection: Society
Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.Collection: Alone
Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.Collection: Equality