Samuel Johnson Quotes

Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults.

He said that few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forgo the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive how to fill the interval between dinner and supper.

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow.

If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.

Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.

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

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

My diseases are an asthma and a dropsy and, what is less curable, seventy-five.

Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.

Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children.

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

Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.

To excite opposition and inflame malevolence is the unhappy privilege of courage made arrogant by consciousness of strength.

Network. Anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.

Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor.

Friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness and its permanence from the other.

Where there is no difficulty there is no praise.

Women can spin very well; but they cannot make a good book of cookery.

Among the calamities of war may be numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.

Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate.

Time quickly puts an end to artificial and accidental fame

In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence.

Confidence is a plant of slow growth; especially in an aged bosom

The present time is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.

From ignorance our comfort flows, the only wretched are the wise

The great source of pleasure is variety.

Come, let me know what it is that makes a Scotch man happy!

"Uisce Beatha" is a compounded distilled spirit being drawn on aromatics, and the Irish sort is particularly distinguished for its pleasant and mild flavour.

The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket; a very few names may be considered as perpetual lamps that shine unconsumed.

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

Words are but the signs of ideas.

What is easy is seldom excellent.

The disturbers of our happiness, in this world, are our desires, our griefs, and our fears.

People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.

A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse, not a remarkable mathematician.

The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy.

To hear complaints is wearisome alike to the wretched and the happy.

What I gained by being in France was learning to be better satisfied with my own country.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

We are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction.

I have always said the first Whig was the Devil.

To a poet nothing can be useless.

Love is only one of many passions.

He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience.

The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence.

It is observed of gold, by an old epigrammatist, that to have it is to be in fear, and to want it is to be in sorrow.

Indolence is the devil's cushion.

A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity.