Samuel Johnson Quotes

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.

No man can perform so little as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitude that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful.

All industry must be excited by hope.

Those who attempt nothing themselves think every thing easily performed, and consider the unsuccessful always as criminal.

A man is not obliged honestly to answer a question which should not properly be put.

Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new.

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into the short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.

The finest landscape in the world is improved by a good inn in the foreground.

Men hate more steadily than they love.

It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.

It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful.

Every man is of importance to himself.

Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.

The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.

A merchant may, perhaps, be a man of an enlarged mind, but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind.

Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.

I would consent to have a limb amputated to recover my spirits

We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures

Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions

I respect Millar, sir: he has raised the price of literature.

Justice is indispensably and universally necessary, and what is necessary must always be limited, uniform, and distinct

A coxcomb is ugly all over with the effectation of a fine gentleman.

The friendship which is to be practised or expected by common mortals, must take its rise from mutual pleasure, and must end when the power ceases of delighting each other.

The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside

Love has no great influences upon the sum of life.

There is always something a woman will prefer to the truth.

When a Man is tried of London, he is tired of life.

An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty. Men who have practiced tortures on animals without pity, relating them without shame, how can they still hold their heads among human beings?

The liberty of using harmless pleasure will not be disputed; but it is still to be examined what pleasures are harmless.

When the eye or the imagination is struck with an uncommon work, the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was performed

A ship is worse than a gaol. There is, in a gaol, better air, better company, better conveniency of every kind; and a ship has the additional disadvantage of of being in danger.

A soldier's time is passed in distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption.

The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it.

To do nothing is in everyone's power.

On Sir Joshua Reynolds's observing that the real character of a man was found out by his amusements. Yes, Sir, no man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.

From all our observations we may collect with certainty, that misery is the lot of man, but cannot discover in what particular condition it will find most alleviations.

Much mischief is done in the world with very little interest or design.

Men are most powerfully affected by those evils which themselves feel, or which appear before their own eyes.

Frequent discontent must proceed from frequent hardships.

I do not know, sir, that the fellow is an infidel; but if he be an infidel, he is an infidel as a dog is an infidel; that is to say, he has never thought upon the subject.

The liberty of the press is a blessing when we are inclined to write against others, and a calamity when we find ourselves overborne by the multitude of our assailants.

No wonder, Sir, that he is vain; a man who is perpetually flattered in every mode that can be conceived. So many bellows have blown the fire, that one wonders he is not by this time become a cinder.

But, perhaps, the flatterer is not often detected; for an honest mind is not apt to suspect, and no one exerts the power of discernment with much vigour when selflove favors the deceit.

Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves.

What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written.

The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind.

The faults of a man loved or honoured sometimes steal secretly and imperceptibly upon the wise and virtuous, but by injudicious fondness or thoughtless vanity are adopted with design.

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