Samuel Johnson

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."

"If you would keep your sons from the gallows, you must keep them from books."

"Nothing is so fatiguing as the life of leisure."

"The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write."

"To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition."

"Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals."

"No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures."

"Despotism is the only form of government which may with ease be introduced into any state."

"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it."

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."

"Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not."

"Being in a ship is like being in a jail with the chance of being drowned."

"The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken."

"A man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly to it."

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

"Clear your mind of cant."

"Love is the desire of the whole being to be united with something or somebody."

"Money is not the primary goal, honor and virtue are."

"To listen well is as powerful a practice as to talk well."

"The same principle that makes a man a speculative atheist would make him a speculative libertine."

"Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present moment."

"Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off."

"A man must be very much in love when he leaves London for Wales."

"The greatest pleasure of a reading man is to escape the tedium of the world through books."

"A good memory is a dangerous thing."

"Happiness is a state of activity of the soul in accordance with virtue."

"Knowledge is power."

"Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience."

"Every man is the creature of the age in which he lives."

"I hate a man who swallows his meat without conversation."