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!

It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.

Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young.

Never speak of a man in his own presence. It is always indelicate and may be offensive .

None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence.

No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred animadversion, than the negligence with which men overlook their own faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them, however frequently repeated.

Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay an author.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.

In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.

Life is short. The sooner that a man begins to enjoy his wealth the better.

If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand no doubt we should pity the state of his mind but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first and pity him afterwards.

Pleasure, in itself harmless, may become mischievous, by endearing to us a state which we know to be transient and probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts from that of which every hour brings us nearer to the beginning, and of which no length of time will bring us to the end. Mortification is not virtuous in itself, nor has any other use, but that it disengages us from the allurements of sense. In the state of future perfection, to which we all aspire, there will be pleasure without danger, and security without restraint.

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

Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire.

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

While grief is fresh every attempt to divert it only irritates.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks is truth and every other man has a right to knock him down for it.

Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.

Every other author may aspire to praise the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.

He left the name at which the world grew pale To point a moral or adorn a tale.