Samuel Johnson Quotes

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.

You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

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

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

Exert your talents, and distinguish yourself, and don't think of retiring from the world, until the world will be sorry that you retire.

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

Our aspirations are our possibilities.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.

The future is purchased by the present.

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.

Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it

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

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument.

There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.

As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.

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

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay an author.

Language is the dress of thought.

A man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he has both enjoyments.

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

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

Oats. A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it.

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

In a man's letters his soul lies naked.

Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men.

No one is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, their fondness for themselves.

Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.

Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

While an author is yet living, we estimate his powers by his worst performance; and when he is dead, we rate him by his best.

Those who attain any excellence commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often granted upon easier terms

To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.

All intellectual improvement arises from leisure.

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

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

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

Slander is the revenge of a coward, and dissimulation of his defense.

Is not a patron one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors

The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England.

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.

The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.

Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.

If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.

The best part of every author is in general to be found in his book, I assure you.

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.

A fishing pole is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool on the other

Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of language.

Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.

Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

Where there is no difficulty there is no praise.

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.

When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.

To preserve health is a moral and religious duty, for health is the basis of all social virtues. We can no longer be useful when not well.

To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.

There are in every age new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.

The triumph of hope over experience.

The poor and the busy have no leisure for sentimental sorrow.

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

Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.

Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.

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

The drama's laws the drama's patrons give. For we that live to please must please to live.

In all pleasures hope is a considerable part.

Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.

Confidence is a plant of slow growth; especially in an aged bosom

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

The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.

Whoever envies another confesses his superiority.

Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. he whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

The truly strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.

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

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into the short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.

Grief is a species of idleness.

Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance

There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful

Of all the griefs that harass the distressed, sure the most bitter is a scornful jest

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.

Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.

No mind is much employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments.

The first years of man must make provision for the last.

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

Round numbers are always false.

The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence.

Guilt once harbored in the conscious breast, intimidates the brave, degrades the great.

Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.

Admiration begins where acquaintance ceases

There are charms made only for distant admiration.

Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Moderation is commonly firm, and firmness is commonly successful.

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

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

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

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

The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.