Samuel Johnson Quotes

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 a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.

Never mind the use--do it!

A man who is good enough to go to heaven is good enough to be a clergyman.

Few moments are more pleasing than those in which the mind is concerting measures for a new undertaking.

Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances; it is often concealed in splendour, and often in extravagance.

All power of fancy over reason is a degree of madness.

Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.

Friendship is not always the sequel of obligation.

I should as soon think of contradicting a bishop

To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege; to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.

Love is only one of many passions.

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

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

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

Contempt is a kind of gangrene which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees.

We are told, that the black bear is innocent; but I should not like to trust myself with him.

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

By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.

The habit of looking on the bright side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year.

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

A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one; no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

Riches are of no value in themselves; their use is discovered only in that which they procure.

Those authors who would find many readers, must endeavour to please while they instruct.

When a friend is carried to his grave, we at once find excuses for every weakness, and palliation of every fault. We recollect a thousand endearments, which before glided off our minds without impression, a thousand favors unrepaid, a thousand duties unperformed; and wish, vainly wish, for his return, not so much that we may receive as that we may bestow happiness, and recompense that kindness which before we never understood.

There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?

Ancient travelers guessed; modern travelers measure.

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

A transition from an author's book to his conversation is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur, and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.

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.

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

Nothing has so exposed men of learning to contempt and ridicule as their ignorance of things which are known to all but themselves. Those who have been taught to consider the institutions of the schools as giving the last perfection to human abilities are surprised to see men wrinkled with study, yet wanting to be instructed in the minute circumstances of propriety, or the necessary form of daily transaction; and quickly shake off their reverence for modes of education which they find to produce no ability above the rest of mankind.

Books without the knowledge of life are useless.

Cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.

The peculiar doctrine of Christianity is that of a universal sacrifice and perpetual propitiation.

You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not - silence is the sharper sword.

If you want to be a writer, then write. Write every day!

From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,- Path, motive, guide, original, and end.

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.

Faction seldom leaves a man honest, however it might find him.

Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine that he possesses some qualities superior, either in kind or degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world.

Once a coxcomb, always a coxcomb.

Sir, when you have seen one green field, you have seen all green fields. Let us walk down Cheapside.

There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business.

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.

No member of a society has a right to teach any doctrine contrary to what the society holds to be true.