Samuel Johnson Quotes

We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself.

Foppery is never cured; it is the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, are never rectified; once a coxcomb always a coxcomb.

Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean advantages.

General irregularities are known in time to remedy themselves. By the constitution of ancient Egypt, the priesthood was continually increasing, till at length there was no people beside themselves; the establishment was then dissolved, and the number of priests was reduced and limited. Thus among us, writers will, perhaps, be multiplied, till no readers will be found, and then the ambition of writing must necessarily cease.

They who look but little into futurity, have, perhaps, the quickest sensation of the present.

It is commonly supposed that the uniformity of a studious life affords no matter for narration: but the truth is, that of the most studious life a great part passes without study. An author partakes of the common condition of humanity; he is born and married like another man; he has hopes and fears, expectations and disappointments, griefs and joys, and friends and enemies, like a courtier or a statesman; nor can I conceive why his affairs shuld not excite curiosity as much as the whisper of a drawing-room, or the factions of a camp.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

There is such a difference between the pursuits of men in great cities that one part of the inhabitants lives to little other purpose than to wonder at the rest. Some have hopes and fears, wishes and aversions, which never enter into the thoughts of others, and inquiry is laboriously exerted to gain that which those who possess it are ready to throw away.

The size of a man's understanding might always be justly measured by his mirth.

That distrust which intrudes so often on your mind is a mode of melancholy, which, if it be the business of a wise man to be happy, it is foolish to indulge; and if it be a duty to preserve our faculties entire for their proper use, it is criminal. Suspicion is very often an useless pain.

Never, my dear Sir, do you take it into your head that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and my esteem; I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of exemplary piety.

We all live upon the hope of pleasing somebody, and the pleasure of pleasing ought to be greatest, and at last always will be greatest, when our endeavours are exerted in consequence of our duty.

Merit rather enforces respect than attracts fondness.

To a people warlike and indigent, an incursion into a rich country is never hurtful.

A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse, not a remarkable mathematician.

The resolution of the combat is seldom equal to the vehemence of the charge.

Of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished.

That we must all die, we always knew, I wish I had sooner remembred it.

In matters of business, no woman stops at integrity.

They who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it.

My dear friend, clear your mind of can't.

The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence.

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

No man tells his opinion so freely as when he imagines it received with implicit veneration.

None are happy but by anticipation of change.

As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who consults his own dignity, to retract it as soon as he discovers it.

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

It would add much to human happiness, if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at once useless and afflictive, that the mind might perform its functions without encumbrance, and the past might no longer encroach upon the present.

I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain.

In such a government as ours no man is appointed to an office because he is the fittest for it--nor hardly in any other government--because there are so many connections and dependencies to be studied.

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

None but those who have learned the art of subjecting their senses as well as reason to hypothetical systems can be persuaded by the most specious rhetorician that the lots of life are equal; yet it cannot be denied that every one has his peculiar pleasures and vexations, that external accidents operate variously upon different minds, and that no man can exactly judge from his own sensations what another would feel in the same circumstances.

The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.

It is not indeed certain, that the most refined caution will find a proper time for bringing a man to the knowledge of his own failing, or the most zealous benevolence reconcile him to that judgment by which they are detected; but he who endeavours only the happiness of him whom he reproves will always have either the satisfaction of obtaining or deserving kindness; if he succeeds, he benefits his friend; and if he fails, he has at least the consciousness that he suffers for only doing well.

Every man has something to do which he neglects, every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat.

Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate inquiry whether it is right.

An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay, And glides in modest innocence away.

Actions are visible, though motives are secret.

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

Our minds should not be empty because if they are not preoccupied by good, evil will break in upon them.

A transition from an author's book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city.

Happiness," said he, "must be something solid and permanent, without fear and without uncertainty.

Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.

I know not why any one but a school boy in his declamation would whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they were rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves and of one another.

The duties of religion, sincerely and regularly performed, will always be sufficient to exalt the meanest and to exercise the highest understanding.

Friendship may well deserve the sacrifice of pleasure, though not of conscience.