Samuel Johnson Quotes
Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.
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.
Oats. A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.
Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
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.
The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.
Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.
Riches are of no value in themselves; their use is discovered only in that which they procure.
Men who could willingly resign the luxuries and sensual pleasures of a large fortune cannot consent to live without the grandeur and the homage.
Resentment gratifies him who intended an injury, and pains him unjustly who did not intend it.
The duties of religion, sincerely and regularly performed, will always be sufficient to exalt the meanest and to exercise the highest understanding.
No man reads a book of science from pure inclination. The books that we do read with pleasure are light compositions, which contain a quick succession of events.
To be prejudiced is always to be weak; yet there are prejudices so near to laudable that they have been often praised and are always pardoned.
It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest. They support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for to-morrow.
Politeness is fictitious benevolence. Depend upon it, the want of it never fails to produce something disagreeable to one or other.
I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.
Genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies and animates.
A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.
Never believe extraordinary characters which you hear of people. Depend upon it, they are exaggerated. You do not see one man shoot a great deal higher than another.