Samuel Johnson

The endearing elegance of female friendship.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

"Yet I do not mean to add new terrors to those which have already seized upon Pekuah. There can be no reason why spectres should haunt the Pyramid more than other places, or why they should have power or will to hurt innocence and purity. …

That it is doubted by single cavillers can very little weaken the general evidence, and some who deny it with their tongues confess it by their fears.

I will not undertake to maintain against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages and of all nations. There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed.

That the dead are seen no more

Example is always more efficacious than precept.

But it is evident, that these bursts of universal distress are more dreaded than felt; thousands and ten thousands flourish in youth, and wither in age, without the knowledge of any other than domestic evils, and share the same pleasures …

The first years of man must make provision for the last.

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.

The Prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he should understand less as he heard him longer. He therefore bowed and was silent; and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied and the rest vanquished, rose up and departed with …

Very few live by choice. Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight and with which he did not always willingly cooperate.

The causes of good and evil are so various and uncertain, so often entangled with each other, so diversified by various relations, and so much subject to accidents which cannot be foreseen, that he who would fix his condition upon …

In the assembly, where you passed the last night, there appeared such spriteliness of air, and volatility of fancy, as might have suited beings of an higher order, formed to inhabit serener regions inaccessible to care or sorrow. Yet, …

Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanicks laughs at strength.

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.

A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.

The poet must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.

To a poet nothing can be useless.

Nothing ... will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.

"I fly from pleasure," said the prince, "because pleasure has ceased to please; I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others."