Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little danger.
Samuel Johnson

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.
Samuel Johnson

So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.
Samuel Johnson

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

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

Such is the state of life, that 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.
Samuel Johnson

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.
Samuel Johnson

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.
Samuel Johnson

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

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

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.
Samuel Johnson

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.
Samuel Johnson

The future is purchased by the present.
Samuel Johnson

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.
Samuel Johnson

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.
Samuel Johnson

The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.
Samuel Johnson

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.
Samuel Johnson

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
Samuel Johnson

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
Samuel Johnson

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
Samuel Johnson