Samuel Johnson Quotes

The perfect day for quitting is not real. It will never come, so might as well start today

God Himself, sir, does not propose to judge a man until his life is over. Why should you and I?

A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.

No man sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity.

To use two languages familiarly and without contaminating one by the other, is very difficult; and to use more than two is hardly to be hoped. The prizes which some have received for their multiplicity of languages may be sufficient to excite industry, but can hardly generate confidence.

Presumption will be easily corrected; but timidity is a disease of the mind more obstinate and fatal.

Long customs are not easily broken; he that attempts to change the course of his own life very often labors in vain; and how shall we do that for others, which we are seldom able to do for ourselves.

As he that lives longest lives but a little while, every man may be certain that he has no time to waste. The duties of life are commensurate to its duration; and every day brings its task, which, if neglected, is doubled on the morrow.

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

That what cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.

Human happiness has always its abatements; the brightest sunshine of success is not without a cloud.

Many causes may vitiate a writer's judgement of his own works. On that which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain: what has been produced without toilsome efforts is considered with delight as a proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work, whatever it be, has necessarily most of the grace of novelty.

It is justly considered as the greatest excellency of art to imitate nature; but it is necessary to distinguish those parts of nature which are most proper for imitation: greater care is still required in representing life, which is so often discoloured by passion or deformed by wickedness. If the world be promiscuously described, I cannot see of what use it can be to read the account; or why it may not be as safe to turn the eye immediately upon mankind, as upon a mirror which shows all that presents itself without discrimination.

Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet. From those sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we do not easily receive strong impressions, or delightful images; and words to which we are nearly strangers, whenever they occur, draw that attention on themselves which they should transmit to other things.

Waste cannot be accurately told, though we are sensible how destructive it is. Economy, on the one hand, by which a certain income is made to maintain a man genteelly; and waste, on the other, by which on the same income another man lives shabbily, cannot be defined. It is a very nice thing; as one man wears his coat out much sooner than another, we cannot tell how.

Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.

There is ... scarcely any species of writing of which we can tell what is its essence, and what are its constituents; every new genius produces some innovation, which, when invented and approved, subverts the rules which the practice of foregoing authors had established.

I will take no more physick, not even my opiates; for I have prayed that I may render up my soul to God unclouded.

Few have abilities so much needed by the rest of the world as to be caressed on their own terms; and he that will not condescend to recommend himself by external embellishments must submit to the fate of just sentiment meanly expressed, and be ridiculed and forgotten before he is understood.

Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.

To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.

As the mind must govern the hands, so in every society the man of intelligence must direct the man of labor.

In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much owing to the good opinion of mankind.

To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind, because their preference was made without, a comparison; but it has never been my fortune to find, either in ancient or modern writers, any honourable mention of those, who have, with equal blindness, hated their country.

Nothing is more common than mutual dislike, where mutual approbation is particularly expected.

The future is bought with the present.

He who would govern his actions by the laws of virtue must regulate his thoughts by those of reason.

Wisdom and virtue are by no means sufficient, without the supplemental laws of good-breeding, to secure freedom from degenerating into rudeness, or self esteem from swelling into insolence. A thousand incivilities may be committed, and a thousand offices neglected. without any remorse of conscience, or reproach from reason.

By the consultation of books, whether of dead or living authors, many temptations to petulance and opposition, which occur in oral conferences, are avoided. An author cannot obtrude his service unasked, nor can be often suspected of any malignant intention to insult his readers with his knowledge or his wit. Yet so prevalent is the habit of comparing ourselves with others, while they remain within the reach of our passions, that books are seldom read with complete impartiality, but by those from whom the writer is placed at such a distance that his life or death is indifferent.

The insolence of wealth will creep out.

Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.

Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

Scarce any man becomes eminently disagreeable but by a departure from his real character, and an attempt at something for which nature or education has left him unqualified.

We may have many acquaintances, but we can have but few friends; this made Aristotle say that he that hath many friends hath none.

The true effect of genuine politeness seems to be rather ease than pleasure.

Lectures were once useful; but now when all can read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary.

He that floats lazily down the stream, in pursuit of something borne along by the same current, will find himself indeed moved forward; but unless he lays his hand to the oar, and increases his speed by his own labour, must be always at the same distance from that which he is following.

Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may be properly charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it.

All history was at first oral.

He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.

Though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one man often make many miserable.

Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.