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You cannot give me an instance of any man who is permitted to lay out his own time contriving not to have tedious hours.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
Teacher
Translator
Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Time
Tedious
Lays
Instance
Hours
Cannot
Give
Contriving
Giving
Ennui
Men
Permitted

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Fear naturally quickens the flight of guilt.
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Pleasure itself is not a vice
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The whole power of cunning is privative to say nothing, and to do nothing , is the utmost of its reach. Yet men, thus narrow by nature and mean by art, are sometimes able to rise by the miscarriages of bravery and the openness of integrity, and, watching failures and snatching opportunities, obtain advantages which belong to higher characters.
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Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.
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The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
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Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.
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Truth allows no choice.
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No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
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Every other enjoyment malice may destroy every other panegyric envy may withhold but no human power can deprive the boaster of his own encomiums.
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A newswriter is a man without virtue, who lies at home for his own profit.
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Suspicion is very often a useless pain.
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I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.
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Since every man is obliged to promote happiness and virtue, he should be careful not to mislead unwary minds, by appearing to set too high a value upon things by which no real excellence is conferred.
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I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.
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Wheresoe'er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new: Endless labor all along, Endless labor to be wrong: Phrase that Time has flung away Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.
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In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence.
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Life, however short, is made still shorter by waste of time.
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Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.
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It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful.
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There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse.
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