Samuel Johnson Quotes
Collection of top 100 famous quotes about Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson Quotes & Sayings
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I wish there were some cure, like the lover's leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession.
— Samuel Johnson
ADIAPHORY (ADIA'PHORY) n.s.[Gr.]Neutrality; indifference.
— Samuel Johnson
Moderation is commonly firm, and firmness is commonly successful.
— Samuel Johnson
Most men are more willing to indulge in easy vices than to practise laborious virtues.
— Samuel Johnson
In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.
(On the Bravery of the English Common Soldiers) — Samuel Johnson
(On the Bravery of the English Common Soldiers) — Samuel Johnson
No, Sir, you will have much more influence by giving or lending money where it is wanted, than by hospitality.
— Samuel Johnson
New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.
— Samuel Johnson
You can never be wise unless you love reading.
— Samuel Johnson
Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
— Samuel Johnson
The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another.
— Samuel Johnson
Towering is the confidence of twenty-one.
— Samuel Johnson
We seldom learn the true want of what we have till it is discovered that we can have no more.
— Samuel Johnson
The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.
— Samuel Johnson
Thaumatomane: a person possessed of a passion for magic and wonders, Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson.
— Susanna Clarke
Then with no throbs of fiery pain, No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain, And freed his soul the nearest way.
— Samuel Johnson
As the faculty of writing has chiefly been a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has always been thrown upon the women.
— Samuel Johnson
Condemned to Hope's delusive mine,
As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blasts or slow decline
Our social comforts drop away. — Samuel Johnson
As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blasts or slow decline
Our social comforts drop away. — Samuel Johnson
I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.
— Samuel Johnson
There must always be some advantage on one side or the other, and it is better that advantage should be had by talents than by chance.
— Samuel Johnson
To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.
— William Samuel Johnson
Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.
— Samuel Johnson
That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem.
— Samuel Johnson
He that never thinks can never be wise.
— Samuel Johnson
He that has once concluded it lawful to resist power, when it wants merit, will soon find a want of merit, to justify his resistance to power.
— Samuel Johnson
We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember.
— Samuel Johnson
All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.
— Samuel Johnson
Whisky making is the art of making poison pleasant
— Samuel Johnson
Security will produce danger.
— Samuel Johnson
Deviation from Nature is deviation from happiness.
— Samuel Johnson
That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments ...
— Samuel Johnson
It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity.
— William Samuel Johnson
AMISSION (AMI'SSION) n.s.[amissio, Lat.]Loss.
— Samuel Johnson
To read, write, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters.
— Samuel Johnson
The dangers gather as the treasures rise.
— Samuel Johnson
I doubt if there ever was a man who was not gratified by being told that he was liked by the women.
— Samuel Johnson
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
— Samuel Johnson
In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness - inspissated gloom.
— Samuel Johnson
Resentment is a union of sorrow with malignity; a combination of a passion which all endeavor to avoid with a passion which all concur to detest.
— Samuel Johnson
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
— Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson: A book should either allow us to escape existence or teach us how to endure it .
— David Shields
Almost all the moral good which is left among us is the apparent effect of physical evil.
— Samuel Johnson
Dishonor waits on perfidy. A man should blush to think a falsehood; it is the crime of cowards.
— Samuel Johnson
Unless a woman has an amorous heart, she is a dull companion.
— Samuel Johnson
Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place.
— Samuel Johnson
Officious, innocent, sincere, Of every friendless name the friend.
— Samuel Johnson
Some fusty fellow, perhaps Samuel Johnson, had once said that every man was sorry if he hadn't been a soldier. She
— Mary Jo Putney
What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it; for folly doesn't deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect.
— Samuel Johnson
I never take a nap after dinner
but when I have had a bad night,
and then the nap takes me. — Samuel Johnson
but when I have had a bad night,
and then the nap takes me. — Samuel Johnson
To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence
an exemption granted only to invariable virtue. — Samuel Johnson
an exemption granted only to invariable virtue. — Samuel Johnson
Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.
— Samuel Johnson
O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.
— Samuel Johnson
The present is never a happy state to any human being.
— Samuel Johnson
Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.
— Samuel Johnson
All imposture weakens confidence and chills benevolence.
— Samuel Johnson
A second marriage is a triumph of hope over experience
— Samuel Johnson
Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.
— Samuel Johnson
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
— Samuel Johnson
The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another.
— Samuel Johnson
Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.
— Samuel Johnson
By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.
— Samuel Johnson
I would consent to have a limb amputated to recover my spirits
— Samuel Johnson
No man sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity.
— Samuel Johnson
Credulity is the common failing of inexperienced virtue; and he who is spontaneously suspicious may justly be charged with radical corruption.
— Samuel Johnson
The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation.
— Samuel Johnson
It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the eye fixed on something remote.
— Samuel Johnson
If the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.
— Samuel Johnson
Assertion is not argument; to contradict the statement of an opponent is not proof that you are correct.
— Samuel Johnson
Was ever poet so trusted before?
— Samuel Johnson
Excise: A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.
— Samuel Johnson
Babies do not want to hear about babies; they like to be told of giants and castles.
— Samuel Johnson
He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
— Samuel Johnson
Invades the sacred hour of silent rest and leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast." ~ Samuel Johnson
— J.J. McAvoy
It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.
— Samuel Johnson
The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendor cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate.
— Samuel Johnson
The cankered passion of envy is nothing akin to the silly envy of the ass.L'Estrange,Fab.xxxviii.
— Samuel Johnson
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
— Samuel Johnson
When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.
— Samuel Johnson
We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures
— Samuel Johnson
When a man marries a widow his jealousies revert to the past: no man is as good as his wife says her first husband was
— Samuel Johnson
Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.
— Samuel Johnson
The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
— Samuel Johnson
The man who is asked by an author what he thinks of his work is put to the torture and is not obliged to speak the truth.
— Samuel Johnson
ACCEPTATION (ACCEPTA'TION) n.s.[from accept.]1. Reception, whether good or bad. This large sense seems now wholly out of use.
— Samuel Johnson
I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.
— Samuel Johnson
When the eye or the imagination is struck with an uncommon work, the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was performed
— Samuel Johnson
All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.
— Samuel Johnson
Never mind the use
do it! — Samuel Johnson
do it! — Samuel Johnson