Samuel Johnson Quotes

Scarcely any degree of judgment is sufficient to restrain the imagination from magnifying that on which it is long detained

Admiration must be continued by that novelty which first produces it; and how much soever is given, there must always be reason to imagine that more remains.

Advice is offensive, it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves.

Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate inquiry whether it is right.

There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse.

Ladies, stock and tend your hive, Trifle not at thirty-five; For, howe'er we boast and strive, Life declines from thirty-five; He that ever hopes to thrive Must begin by thirty-five.

Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage, Till pitying Nature signs the last release, And bids afflicted worth retire to peace.

Differences, we know, are never so effectually laid asleep as by some common calamity; an enemy unites all to whom he threatens danger.

It is almost always the unhappiness of a victorious disputant to destroy his own authority by claiming too many consequences, or diffusing his proposition to an indefensible extent.

The coquette has companions, indeed, but no lovers,--for love is respectful and timorous; and where among her followers will she find a husband?

Where necessity ends, desire and curiosity begin; and no sooner are we supplied with everything nature can demand than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites.

Cowardice encroaches fast upon such as spend their lives in company of persons higher than themselves.

The desires of man increase with his acquisitions.

By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen. I hope I see things from a greater distance.

Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.

The hopes of zeal are not wholly groundless.

A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company

His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

I also admit, that there are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits which are not good till they are rotten.

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

I am a great friend to public amusements; for they keep people from vice.

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded; for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadsul than its extinction.

Oats. A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.

Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

Health is so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly.

Catch, then, oh! catch the transient hour, Improve each moment as it flies; Life's a short summer-man a flower; He dies-alas! how soon he dies!

For patience, sov'reign o'er transmuted ill.

Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.

Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.

People have now a-days got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do as much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken.

I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom.