Samuel Johnson quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Samuel Johnson on Wise Famous Quotes.

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.

I have always said the first Whig was the Devil.

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

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

Contempt is a kind of gangrene which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

Ignorance, when voluntary, is criminal, and a man may be properly charged with that evil which he neglected or refused to learn how to prevent.

Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail.

Those authors who would find many readers, must endeavour to please while they instruct.

New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.

You can never be wise unless you love reading.

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

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect.

It is necessary to hope ... for hope itself is happiness.

He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.

The majority of a society is the true definition of the public.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.

There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.

The necessary connexion of representatives with taxes, seems to have sunk deep into many of those minds, that admit sounds, without their meaning.

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.

Every desire is a viper in the bosom, who while he was chill was harmless; but when warmth gave him strength, exerted it in poison.

There are charms made only for distant admiration.

I have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch and tumbling into it

The civilities of the great are never thrown away.

In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence.

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

He that has too much to do will do something wrong.

Pride is undoubtedly the original of anger; but pride, like every other passion, if it once breaks loose from reason, counteracts its own purposes.

Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.

No man can fall into contempt but those who deserve it.

When two Eglishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.

Self-love is often rather arrogant than blind; it does not hide our faults from ourselves, but persuades us that they escape the notice of others.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty, and of ease, and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health.

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.

There is no book so poor that it would not be a prodigy if wholly made by a single man.

Of many, imagined blessings it may be doubted whether he that wants or possesses them had more reason to be satisfied with his lot.

This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

The great effect of friendship is beneficence, yet by the first act of uncommon kindness it is endangered.

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

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

Avarice is always poor.

None of the projects or designs which exercise the mind of man are equally subject to obstructions and disappointments with the pursuit of fame.

An exotic and irrational entertainment, which has been always combated, and always has prevailed.

The true art of memory, is the art of attention

Wise married women don't trouble themselves about infidelity in their husbands.

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

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

Misfortunes should always be expected.

The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside

Resentment gratifies him who intended an injury, and pains him unjustly who did not intend it.

To prevent evil is the great end of government, the end for which vigilance and severity are properly employed.

Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

Beauty, without kindness, dies unenjoyed and undelighting.

He who is extravagant will quickly become poor; and poverty will enforce dependence, and invite corruption.

When people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer their inferior while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them.

What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.

To correspond to; to suit with. In water face answereth to face: so the heart of man to man.BibleProv.xxvii. 19.7.

Politeness is fictitious benevolence. Depend upon it, the want of it never fails to produce something disagreeable to one or other.

A man must assume the moral burden of his own boredom.

All history was at first oral.

Grief is a species of idleness.

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.

The vicious count their years; virtuous, their acts.

You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.

It is the fate of those who toil at the lower employments of life, to be rather driven by the fear of evil, than attracted by the prospect of good;

Men have been wise in many different modes; but they have always laughed the same way.

Parents are by no means exempt from the intoxication of dominion.

In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness - inspissated gloom.

Officious, innocent, sincere, Of every friendless name the friend.

Women can spin very well, but they cannot write a good book of cookery.

It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.

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.

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.

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

O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.

To make dictionaries is dull work.

No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.

Love has no great influences upon the sum of life.

If the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.

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

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.

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

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

Some have little power to do good, and have likewise little strength to resist evil.

From ignorance our comfort flows, the only wretched are the wise

The booksellers are generous liberal-minded men.

I look upon it that a man who does not mind his stomach would hardly mind anything else.

To be free it is not enough to beat the system, one must beat the system every day

The public pleasures of far the greater part of mankind are counterfeit.

It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.

The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.

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

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which if not a virtue, is the groundwork of a virtue.

He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience.