Samuel Johnson Quotes

The poor and the busy have no leisure for sentimental sorrow.

A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity.

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef.

Very few live by choice. Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight and with which he did not always willingly cooperate and therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his own.

Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly!

Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.

You can never be wise unless you love reading.

Men know that women are an overmatch for them and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.

We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinions because we very often differ from ourselves.

A man Sir should keep his friendship in constant repair.

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of everything.

If the man who turnips cries Cry not when his father dies 'Tis proof that he had rather Have a turnip than his father.

our triumphant age of plenty is riddled with darker feelings of doubt, cynicism, distrust, boredom and a strange kind of emptiness

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.

It is necessary to hope... for hope itself is happiness.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerales.

Men are like stone jugs - you may lug them where you like by the ears.

When speculation has done its worst two and two still make four.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

It is unjust to claim the privileges of age and retain the playthings of childhood.

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.

We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

Marriage has many pains but celibacy has no pleasures.

Despair is criminal.

Read over your compositions and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine strike it out.

The joy of life is variety the tenderest love requires to be renewed by intervals of absence.

Present opportunities are neglected and attainable good is slighted by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.

No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.

I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.

There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not know it.

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

People have now a-days, (said he,) got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by lectures.—You might teach making of shoes by lectures!