Samuel Johnson Quotes

Wine gives great pleasure, and every pleasure is of itself a good. and A man should cultivate his mind so as to have that confidence and readiness without wine, which wine gives.

Every man may be observed to have a certain strain of lamentation, some peculiar theme of complaint on which he dwells in his moments of dejection.

Never mind the use--do it!

Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject.

There are few so free from vanity as not to dictate to those who will hear their instructions with a visible sense of their own beneficence.

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers.

No one will persist long in helping someone who will not help themselves.

Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.

Men become friends by a community of pleasures.

The process is the reality.

Sir, it is wrong to stir up law-suits; but when once it is certain that a law-suit is to go on, there is nothing wrong in a lawyer's endeavouring that he shall have the benefit, rather than another.

There ambush here relentless ruffians lay, And here the fell attorney prowls for prey.

Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.

A thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another man with a power of versification equal to that of Pope.

Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words.

Luncheon: as much food as one's hand can hold.

Dogs have not the power of comparing. A dog will take a small piece of meat as readily as a large, when both are before him.

This is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery.

I do not see, Sir, that it is reasonable for a man to be angry at another, whom a woman has preferred to him; but angry he is, no doubt; and he is loath to be angry at himself.

Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them.

I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.

Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.

Sir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is better than admiration, - judgement, to estimate things at their true value.

Every man's affairs, however little, are important to himself.

He that has too much to do will do something wrong.

A man had rather have a hundred lies told of him than one truth which he does not wish should be told.

To do something is in every man's power.

A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one.

We ought not to raise expectations which it is not in our power to satisfy.-It is more pleasing to see smoke brightening into flame, than flame sinking into smoke.

The balls of sight are so formed, that one man's eyes are spectacles to another, to read his heart with.

Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place.

There are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.

There is not, perhaps, to a mind well instructed, a more painful occurrence, than the death of one we have injured without reparation.

The belief of immortality is impressed upon all men, and all men act under an impression of it, however they may talk, and though, perhaps, they may be scarcely sensible of it.

No man is obliged to do as much as he can do. A man is to have part of his life to himself.

With what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that the time spent at the toilet is lost in vanity.

Keeping accounts, sir, is of no use when a man is spending his own money, and has nobody to whom he is to account. You won't eat less beef today because you have written down what it cost yesterday.

If a man is in doubt whether it would be better for him to expose himself to martyrdom or not, he should not do it. He must be convinced that he has a delegation from heaven.

About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.

People in distress never think that you feel enough.

Read the book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read.

Though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one man often make many miserable.

Life is surely given us for higher purposes than to gather what our ancestors have wisely thrown away, and to learn what is of no value but because it has been forgotten.

All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare.

No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius.

Levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.

In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much owing to the good opinion of mankind.

You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.

Trust as little as you can to report, and examine all you can by your own senses.

This world, where much is to be done and little to be known.