Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost. – Samuel Johnson
Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess. – Samuel Johnson
When any fit of gloominess, or perversion of mind, lays hold upon you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaints. – Samuel Johnson
All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil. – Samuel Johnson
Life is a chaplet of little miseries, which the philosopher unstrings with a smile. Be philosophers as I am, gentlemen; sit down to the table and let us drink; nothing makes the future look so bright as surveying it through a glass of chambertin. – Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers (1844), “Chapter XLVII: A Family Affair,”