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.
— Samuel Johnson
Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.
By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.
No man was ever great by imitation.
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.
Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.
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.
The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.
Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.
The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.
There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.
To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.
I am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.
Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.
To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.
Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.
I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.
Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
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.
Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
Exercise is labor without weariness.
Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.
Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.
Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.
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.
There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.
The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.
When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.
You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.
Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.
Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.
No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.
All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.
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.
You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.
Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.
He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.
Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.
