"A fly may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still."

Johnson, Samuel on Abuse
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"Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then."

Johnson, Samuel on Adversity
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"The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions."

Johnson, Samuel on Advertising
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"Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement."

Johnson, Samuel on Advertising
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"The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery."

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"When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am."

Johnson, Samuel on Age and Aging
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"At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest."

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"Small debts are like small gun shot; they are rattling around us on all sides and one can scarcely escape being wounded. Large debts are like canons, they produce a loud noise, but are of little danger."

Johnson, Samuel on Debt
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"I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him."

Johnson, Samuel on Deception
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"Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment."

Johnson, Samuel on Desire
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"Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy."

Johnson, Samuel on Desire
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"If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance."

Johnson, Samuel on Determination
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"Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to be quite true."

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"Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few."

Johnson, Samuel on Dictionaries
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"Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words."

Johnson, Samuel on Dictionaries
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"Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance."

Johnson, Samuel on Diligence
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"Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue."

Johnson, Samuel on Disappointments
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"No man likes to live under the eye of perpetual disapprobation."

Johnson, Samuel on Disapproval
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"Disease generally begins that equality which death completes."

Johnson, Samuel on Disease
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"Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a gray one."

Johnson, Samuel on Dress
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"Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great."

Johnson, Samuel on Dullness
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"Read your own compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out."

Johnson, Samuel on Editing and Editors
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"What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence."

Johnson, Samuel on Effort
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"A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice."

Johnson, Samuel on Entertainment
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"The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking."

Johnson, Samuel on Enthusiasm
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