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Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine that he possesses some qualities superior, either in kind or degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
Teacher
Translator
Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Either
Possesses
Imagine
Superior
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Superiors
Every
Qualities
Kind
Sees
Men
Degree
Love
Degrees
Allotted
World
Rest
Prompted

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Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.
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Hoc age ['do this'] is the great rule, whether you are serious or merry whether ... learning science or duty from a folio, or floating on the Thames. Intentions must be gathered from acts.
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In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry.
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Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.
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Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.
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Foppery is never cured it is the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, are never rectified once a coxcomb always a coxcomb.
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It is to be steadily inculcated, that virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness.
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An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature.
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The violence of war admits no distinction the lance, that is lifted at guilt and power, will sometimes fall on innocence and gentleness.
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The main of life is composed of small incidents and petty occurrences of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence.
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Pension: An allowance made to anyone without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.
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Those authors are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence.
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The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion.
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So different are the colors of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.
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Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn. [Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.]
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That all who are happy are equally happy is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. A small drinking glass and a large one may be equally full, but the large one holds more than the small.
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The wickedness of a loose or profane author is more atrocious than that of a giddy libertine or drunken ravisher, not only because it extends its effects wider, as a pestilence that taints the air is more destructive than poison infused in a draught, but because it is committed with cool deliberation.
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The drama's laws the drama's patrons give. For we that live to please must please to live.
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The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in a few words.
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Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence.
Samuel Johnson