Quotes from Samuel Johnson

To preserve health is a moral and religious duty, for health is the basis of all social virtues. We can no longer be useful when we are not well.

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged must end in disappointment.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury--you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.

Golf: A game in which you claim the privileges of age and retain the playthings of youth

Without economy none can be rich, and with it few will be poor.

Affectation naturally counterfeits those excellences which are placed at the greatest distance from possibility of attainment, because, knowing our own defects, we eagerly endeavor to supply them with artificial excellence

Wine gives great pleasure; and every pleasure is of itself a good. It is a good, unless counterbalanced by evil.

None are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.

We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor,

Of the innumerable authors whose performances are thus treasured up in magnificent obscurity (in a library), most are forgotten, because they never deserved to be remembered.

Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.