Samuel Johnson Quotes

Towering is the confidence of twenty-one.

Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.

Your aspirations are your possibilities.

If the man who turnips cries, Cry not when his father dies, 'Tis proof that he had rather Have a turnip than his father.

The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights.

There ambush here relentless ruffians lay, And here the fell attorney prowls for prey.

In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man; they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry.

He that condemns himself to compose on a stated day will often bring to his task attention dissipated, a memory embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a mind distracted with anxieties, a body languishing with disease: he will labour on a barren topic till it is too late to change it; or, in the ardour of invention, diffuse his thoughts into wild exuberance, which the pressing hour of publication cannot suffer judgment to examine or reduce.

It is wonderful what a difference learning makes upon people even in the common intercourse of life, which does not appear to be much connected with it.

Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.

He that wishes to see his country robbed of its rights cannot be a patriot.

You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.

We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinion, because we very often differ from ourselves.

Good-humor is a state between gayety and unconcern,--the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another.

Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them.

"Uisce Beatha" is a compounded distilled spirit being drawn on aromatics, and the Irish sort is particularly distinguished for its pleasant and mild flavour.

Ah! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him.

Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles; do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.

Of all the grief's that harass the distressed; sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.

It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

Indolence is the devil's cushion.

He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.

I have thought of a pulley to raise me gradually; but that would give me pain, as it would counteract my natural inclination. I would have something that can dissipate the inertia and give elasticity to the muscles. We can heat the body, we can cool it; we can give it tension or relaxation; and surely it is possible to bring it into a state in which rising from bed will not be a pain.

But the distant hope of being one day useful or eminent ought not to mislead us too far from that study which is equally requisite to the great and mean, to the celebrated and obscure; the art of moderating the desires, of repressing the appetites; and of conciliating or retaining the favour of mankind.

That man is never happy for the present is so true, that all his relief from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little while. Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

Domestic discord is not inevitably and fatally necessary; but yet it is not easy to avoid.

No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius.

I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.

No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.

Where there is emulation, there will be vanity; where there is vanity, there will be folly.

Grief is a species of idleness.

No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred animadversion, than the negligence with which men overlook their own faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them, however frequently repeated.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.

He that resigns his peace to little casualties, and suffers the course of his life to be interrupted for fortuitous inadvertencies or offences, delivers up himself to the direction of the wind, and loses all that constancy and equanimity which constitutes the chief praise of a wise man.

Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits; the other recreates and revives them.

A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.

The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety.

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last; and perhaps always predominates in proportion to the strength of the contemplative faculties. He who easily comprehends all that is before him, and soon exhausts any single subject, is always eager for new inquiries; and in proportion as the intellectual eye takes in a wider prospect, it must be gratified with variety, by more rapid flights and bolder excursions.

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.

It is more reasonable to wish for reputation while it may be enjoyed, as Anacreon calls upon his companions to give him for present use the wine and garlands which they propose to bestow upon his tomb.

By writing, you learn to write.

A voyage to the moon, however romantick and absurd the scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the last century

Exercise is labor without weariness.

That there is something in advice very useful and salutary, seems to be equally confessed on all hands; since even those that reject it, allow for the most part that rejection to be wrong, but charge the fault upon the unskilful manner in which it is given; they admit the efficacy of the medicine, but abhor the nauseousness of the vehicle.

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.