That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Self-esteem]

Self-love is often rather arrogant than blind; it does not hide our faults from ourselves, but persuades us that they escape the notice of others.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Self-love]

The highest panegyric, therefore, that private virtue can receive, is the praise of servants.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Servants]

Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Simplicity]

Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Sincerity]

Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Skepticism]

If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Slander]

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Solitude]

Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favorable to virtue. Remember that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Solitude]

Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Sorrow]

Sorrow is the rust of the soul and activity will cleanse and brighten it.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Sorrow]

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Sorrow]

When speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Speculation]

Round numbers are always false.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Statistics]

It was his peculiar happiness that he scarcely ever found a stranger whom he did not leave a friend; but it must likewise be added, that he had not often a friend long without obliging him to become a stranger.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Strangers]

The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Students]

He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Suspicion]

Suspicion is most often useless pain.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Suspicion]

Its proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Tea]

We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass.
~ Samuel Johnson - [Temptation]