Samuel Johnson Quotes

To revenge reasonable incredulity by refusing evidence, is a degree of insolence with which the world is not yet acquainted; and stubborn audacity is the last refuge of guilt.

Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

Wit is that which has been often thought, but never before was well expressed.

Men who cannot deceive others are very often successful at deceiving themselves.

When the original is well chosen and judiciously copied, the imitator often arrives at excellence which he could never have attained without direction; for few are formed with abilities to discover new possibilities of excellence, and to distinguish themselves by means never tried before.

I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.

That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments...

Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger at his death.

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

Greece appears to be the fountain of knowledge; Rome of elegance

He who writes much will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of particular modes as may be easily noted.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

There is a certain degree of temptation which will overcome any virtue. Now, in so far as you approach temptation to a man, you do him an injury; and, if he is overcome, you share his guilt.

A short letter to a distant friend is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation - a proof of unwillingness to do much, even where there is a necessity of doing something.

Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect.

The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing.

If misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill-fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced.

There may be community of material possessions, but there can never be community of love or esteem.

One of the amusements of idleness is reading without fatigue of close attention; and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read.

In writing, as in life, faults are endured without disgust when they are associated with transcendent merit, and may be sometimes recommended to weak judgments by the lustre which they obtain from their union with excellence; but it is the business of those who presume to superintend the taste or morals of mankind to separate delusive combinations, and distinguish that which may be praised from that which can only be excused.

The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.

Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail.

Books, says Lord Bacon, can never teach us the use of books; the student must learn by commerce with mankind to reduce his speculations to practice. No man should think so highly of himself as to think he can receive but little light from books; no one so meanly, as to believe he can discover nothing but what is to be learned from them.

If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.

If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in the pursuit of truth; if he writes not to make others learned, but to boast the learning which he possesses himself, and wishes to be admired rather than understood, he counteracts the first end of writing, and justly suffers the utmost severity of censure, or the more afflicting severity of neglect.

Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination.

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

Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.

Men, however distinguished by external accidents or intrinsick qualities, have all the same wants, the same pains, and, as far as the senses are consulted, the same pleasures.

Politeness is fictitious benevolence.

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 dreadful than its extinction.

The necessary connexion of representatives with taxes, seems to have sunk deep into many of those minds, that admit sounds, without their meaning.

Wasting a fortune is evaporation by a thousand imperceptible means.

His death eclipsed the gayety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.

I would advise no man to marry who is not likely to propagate understanding.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

Friendship is seldom lasting but between equals, or where the superiority on one side is reduced by some equivalent advantage on the other.

As not every instance of similitude can be considered as a proof of imitation, so not every imitation ought to be stigmatised as plagiarism. The adoption of a noble sentiment, or the insertion of a borrowed ornament, may sometimes display so much judgment as will almost compensate for invention; and an inferior genius may, without any imputation of servility, pursue the paths of the ancients, provided he declines to tread in their footsteps.

The fortitude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by no temptation, can at best be considered but as gold not yet brought to the test, of which therefore the true value cannot be assigned.

There should be a stated day for commemorating the birthday of our Savior, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected.

There are occasions on which all apology is rudeness.

Whatever professes to benefit by pleasing must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something sudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always surprise.

No man can have much kindness for him by whom he does not believe himself esteemed, and nothing so evidently proves esteem as imitation.

Patron: One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is repaid in flattery.

Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past without looking forward to the future.

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.

Such is the state of every age, every sex, and every condition: all have their cares, either from nature or from folly; and whoever, therefore, finds himself inclined to envy another, should remember that he knows not the real condition which he desires to obtain, but is certain that by indulging a vicious passion, he must lessen that happiness which he thinks already too sparingly bestowed.