Samuel Johnson

“כדי שכל בני אדם ילמדו לומר את האמת, יש צורך שכולם ילמדו לשומעה.”

“הניחו לי לחייך עם חכמים ולאכול עם עשירים.”

“השפה היא לבושה של המחשבה.”

“הפטריוטיות היא מפלטו האחרון של הנבל.”

“מה שקל לעשות הוא מצוין לעתים רחוקות.”

“שאיפותינו הן אפשרויותינו.”

“To go and see one druidical temple is only to see that it is nothing, for there is neither art nor power in it; and seeing one is quite enough.”

“Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible. [on hearing a famous violinist]”

“I can discover within me no power of perception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself delighted. Man has surely some latent sense for which this place affords no gratification, or he has some desires distinct from sense which must be satisfied before he can be happy.”

“Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly!”

“When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.”

“The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.”

“The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.”

“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.”

“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to look at catalogues, and at the backs of books in libraries.”

“He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.”

“Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.”