August 6, 1763, p. 134
Said as he kicked a stone, speaking of Berkeley's "ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter".
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

“If you are tired of London, you are tired of life. ”

Samuel Johnson

“I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.”

Samuel Johnson book A Dictionary of the English Language

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote. <br class="br"> Preface http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/preface.html <br class="br">A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

“Enlarge my life with multitude of days!”

Samuel Johnson

In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays:
Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know
That life protracted is protracted woe.
Source: Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), Line 255

“The change of religion in Scotland, eager and vehement as it was, raised an epidemical enthusiasm, compounded of sullen scrupulousness and warlike ferocity, which, in a people whom idleness resigned to their own thoughts, and who conversing only with each other, suffered no dilution of their zeal from the gradual influx of new opinions, was long transmitted in its full strength from the old to the young, but by trade and intercourse with England, is now visibly abating, and giving way too fast to their laxity of practice and indifference of opinion, in which men, not sufficiently instructed to find the middle point, too easily shelter themselves from rigour and constraint.”

Samuel Johnson book A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

p. 8. https://books.google.com/books?id=-6JfAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA8 <br class="br">A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775)

“Of the proportion, which the product of any region bears to the people, an estimate is commonly made according to the pecuniary price of the necessities of life; which is never certain, because it supposes what is far from truth, that the value of money is always the same, and so measures an unknown quantity by an uncertain standard. It is competent enough when the markets of the same country, at different times, and those times not too distant, are to be compared; but of very little use for the purpose of making one nation acquainted with the state of another.”

Samuel Johnson book A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

pp. 366-367. https://books.google.com/books?id=-6JfAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA366 <br class="br">A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775)

“Memory is the mother of all wisdom.”

Samuel Johnson

“Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.”

Samuel Johnson

“To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

No. 68 (10 November 1750)
The Rambler (1750–1752)

“[S]uch is the delight of mental superiority, that none on whom nature or study have conferred it, would purchase the gifts of fortune by its loss.”

Samuel Johnson

The Rambler, No. 150 (Sat 24 Aug 1751). http://www.yalejohnson.com/frontend/sda_viewer?n=106855 See also The Yale Book of Quotations, Samuel Johnson 3 (2006)