“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”

A grim observation on intoxication as an escape from human consciousness · Percival Stockdale, Anecdotes

• Despair
• Mortality

“The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.”

Defining law as accumulated practical wisdom directed towards public good · Piozzi, Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson

• Society
• Truth

“My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.”

Urging freedom from fashionable insincerity and borrowed sentiment · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Truth

“No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.”

Making public greatness dependent on moral character · An Introduction to the Political State of Great Britain

• Politics
• Truth

“A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.”

Measuring civilisation by how it treats people in need · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Hope
• Society

“Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding.”

Suggesting that human beings need pleasures to sweeten life's hardships · Piozzi, Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson

• Joy
• Mortality

“We must either outlive our friends you know, or our friends must outlive us; and I see no man that would hesitate about the choice.”

Facing bereavement as an unavoidable consequence of loving and surviving others · Piozzi, Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson

• Death
• Friendship

“If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still.”

Arguing that awareness of mortality must not paralyse daily living · Boswell, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

• Death
• Time

“It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.”

Shifting attention from the manner of death to the substance of life · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Death
• Mortality

“Those who have endeavoured to teach us to die well, have taught few to die willingly; yet I cannot but hope that a good life might end at least in a contented death.”

Linking the hope of a peaceful death with the conduct of a good life · Letter to Joseph Baretti, 1761

• Death
• Faith
• Hope

“So much so, Sir, that the whole of life is but keeping away the thoughts of it.”

Describing the fear of death as a persistent background to ordinary life · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Death
• Mortality

“No, Sir, admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgement and friendship like being enlivened.”

Contrasting the excitement of love with the steadier vitality of friendship · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Friendship
• Love

“Sir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is better than admiration, --judgement, to estimate things at their true value.”

Contrasting youthful admiration with the discriminating judgement of age · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Time
• Truth

“Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.”

Seeing courage as the virtue that protects every other virtue · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Hope
• Truth

“Sir, a desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every human being, whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has, to get knowledge.”

Affirming curiosity and learning as deep human impulses · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Knowledge
• Truth

“Sir, there is nothing by which a man exasperates most people more, than by displaying a superiour ability or brilliancy in conversation.”

Recognising the envy that conspicuous intellectual display can provoke · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Society
• Truth

“The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression.”

Valuing the warmth left by conversation more than memorable display · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Friendship
• Joy

“Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.”

Placing human kindness alongside material necessity as a central purpose of life · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Friendship
• Joy

“Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.”

A sharp distinction between offering reasons and securing another person's comprehension · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Knowledge
• Truth

“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

Observing how mortality can strip away distraction and sharpen attention · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Death
• Mortality

“A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.”

Presenting friendship as something sustained by continuing care · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Friendship

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

Emphasising determination and disciplined effort in writing · Boswell, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

• Art
• Poetry

“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”

A characteristically provocative defence of professional writing · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Art
• Fame

“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.”

Treating the ability to locate knowledge as a form of knowledge in itself · Boswell, Life of Johnson

• Knowledge
• Truth