Samuel Johnson

Round numbers are always false.

Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.

He who praises everybody praises nobody.

Catch then, O! catch the transient hour, Improve each moment as it flies; Life's a short Summer — man a flower, He dies — alas! how soon he dies!

Here closed in death th' attentive eyes That saw the manners in the face.

Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.

I am inclined to believe that few attacks either of ridicule or invective make much noise, but by the help of those they provoke.

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow; but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.

how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.

That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.

Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.

The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.

I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to be right.

Resolve to spend a certain number of hours every day amongst your books.

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

[T]hey who complain, in peace, of the insolence of the populace, must remember, that their insolence in peace is bravery in war.

Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.

The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life.

It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.

[S]uch is the delight of mental superiority, that none on whom nature or study have conferred it, would purchase the gifts of fortune by its loss.

To neglect at any time preparation for death, is to sleep on our post at a siege, but to omit it in old age, is to sleep at an attack.

There Poetry shall tune her sacred voice, And wake from ignorance the Western World.

Learn, that the present hour alone is man's.