Samuel Johnson Quotes
There is little peace or comfort in life if we are always anxious as to future events. He that worries himself with the dread of possible contingencies will never be at rest.
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.
The truly strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.
An exotic and irrational entertainment, which has been always combated, and always has prevailed.
We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
I doubt if there ever was a man who was not gratified by being told that he was liked by the women.
We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable.
Credulity is the common failing of inexperienced virtue; and he who is spontaneously suspicious may justly be charged with radical corruption.
Man is a transitory being, and his designs must partake of the imperfections their author.
A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him.
It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.
Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured.
When a man marries a widow his jealousies revert to the past: no man is as good as his wife says her first husband was
You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
Those that have done nothing in life, are not qualified to judge of those that have done little
Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.
Men have solicitude about fame; and the greater share they have of it, the more afraid they are of losing it.
It requires but little acquaintance with the heart to know that woman's first wish is to be handsome; and that, consequently, the readiest method of obtaining her kindness is to praise her beauty.
Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords; but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain.
If we require more perfection from women than from ourselves, it is doing them honor.
A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed.
Power is gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent.
All truth is valuable, and satirical criticism may be considered as useful when it rectifies error and improves judgment; he that refines the public taste is a public benefactor.
Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment.
The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights.
In all evils which admit a remedy, impatience is to be avoided, because it wastes that time and attention in complaints, that, if properly applied might remove the cause.
