Samuel Johnson Quotes
Writer
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.
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.
Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.
My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Language is the dress of thought.
No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
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.
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own.
It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
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.
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
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.
Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.
It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.
Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.
All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.
What is easy is seldom excellent.
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
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.
To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.
It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.
Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.
The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.
It is better to live rich than to die rich.
Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.
Exercise is labor without weariness.
When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.
There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
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.
Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
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.
Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.
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.
A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.
Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.
The future is purchased by the present.
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.
Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?
Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.
Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.
It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.
You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not - silence is the sharper sword.
He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.
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.
A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.
He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.
Words are but the signs of ideas.
There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.
By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.
Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.
Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.
Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.
There are charms made only for distant admiration.
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.
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.
Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.
It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.
Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.
The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.
He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.
A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.
The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
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.
The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.
The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.
Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.
To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.
At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.