Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time, of that time which never can return.

More from Samuel Johnson

• Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.
• All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the reproach of falsehood.
• He has, indeed, done it very well; but it is a foolish thing well done.
• I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
• I have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch and tumbling into it.
• Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.