Pitt's Reply to Walpole, Speech, March 6, 1741. This is the composition of Johnson, founded on some note or statement of the actual speech. Johnson said, "That speech I wrote in a garret, in Exeter Street." Boswell: Life of Johnson, 1741
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any high degree; only about as much as is used in the lower kinds of poetry.”

Samuel Johnson

July 6, 1763, p. 120
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

“I have, all my life long, been lying till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good.”

Samuel Johnson

September 14, 1773
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)

“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

Feb. 15, 1766, p. 145
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

“Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanicks laughs at strength.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 13; variant with modernized spelling: Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength.

“He who praises everybody praises nobody.”

Samuel Johnson

Johnson's Works (1787), vol. XI, p. 216; This set included the Life of Samuel Johnson by Sir John Hawkins

“Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.”

Samuel Johnson

1773
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

“The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.”

Samuel Johnson

Vol. I, p. 137
Letters to and from Dr. Samuel Johnson
Variant: The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

“That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

No. 148 (17 August 1751)
The Rambler (1750–1752)

“Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 26

“Come, let me know what it is that makes a Scotchman happy!”

Samuel Johnson

October 23, 1773
Ordering a glass of whisky for himself
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)

“Was ever poet so trusted before?”

Samuel Johnson

1774
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

“Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition.”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

No. 151 (27 August 1751). http://books.google.com/books?id=VvhDAAAAYAAJ&q=%22avarice+is+generally+the+last+passion+of+those+lives+of+which+the+first+part+has+been+squandered+in+pleasure+and+the+second+devoted+to+ambition%22&pg=PA262#v=onepage <br class="br">The Rambler (1750–1752)

“Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.”

Samuel Johnson

The Life of Addison
Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)

“Example is always more efficacious than precept.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 29