Samuel Johnson

“We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.”

“I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.”

“Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.”

“Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.”

“Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extreme...”

“Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.”

“Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.”

“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.”

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

“What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.”

“A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.”

“One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.”

“Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.”

“Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to th...”

“We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.”

“The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.”

“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.”

“There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.”

“Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.”

“What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.”