Samuel Johnson

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

Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.

Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.

Exercise is labor without weariness.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

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 extremely difficult.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern... No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.