Samuel Johnson Quotes
English - Author September 18, 1709 - December 13, 1784


Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson

My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.
Samuel Johnson

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
Samuel Johnson

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

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.
Samuel Johnson

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

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

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.
Samuel Johnson

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
Samuel Johnson

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
Samuel Johnson

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

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

Words are but the signs of ideas.
Samuel Johnson

By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.
Samuel Johnson

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson

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

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

He that overvalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.
Samuel Johnson

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

You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not - silence is the sharper sword.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

What is easy is seldom excellent.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Samuel Johnson

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

By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.
Samuel Johnson

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.
Samuel Johnson

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

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

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.
Samuel Johnson

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

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.
Samuel Johnson

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

No man was ever great by imitation.
Samuel Johnson

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.
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 future is purchased by the present.
Samuel Johnson

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

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

Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.
Samuel Johnson

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

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.
Samuel Johnson

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

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

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
Samuel Johnson

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

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

Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.
Samuel Johnson

There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern... No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.
Samuel Johnson

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

To love one that is great, is almost to be great one's self.
Samuel Johnson

I am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.
Samuel Johnson

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.
Samuel Johnson

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

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
Samuel Johnson

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.
Samuel Johnson

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Samuel Johnson
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You can't be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who's for you and who's against you.
Samuel Johnson

Language is the dress of thought.
Samuel Johnson

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.
Samuel Johnson

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
Samuel Johnson

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

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

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.
Samuel Johnson

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

Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.
Samuel Johnson

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

When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.
Samuel Johnson

The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.
Samuel Johnson

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

Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little danger.
Samuel Johnson

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.
Samuel Johnson

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
Samuel Johnson

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.
Samuel Johnson

There are charms made only for distant admiration.
Samuel Johnson

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

Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.
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

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
Samuel Johnson

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.
Samuel Johnson

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.
Samuel Johnson

Actions are visible, though motives are secret.
Samuel Johnson

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?
Samuel Johnson

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

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
Samuel Johnson

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

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

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.
Samuel Johnson

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
Samuel Johnson

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

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
Samuel Johnson

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

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.
Samuel Johnson

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.
Samuel Johnson

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.
Samuel Johnson

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.
Samuel Johnson

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

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

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

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

Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
Samuel Johnson

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.
Samuel Johnson

Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.
Samuel Johnson

Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.
Samuel Johnson

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

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

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.
Samuel Johnson

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

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

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.
Samuel Johnson

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

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.
Samuel Johnson

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.
Samuel Johnson

From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.
Samuel Johnson

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

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.
Samuel Johnson
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Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.
Samuel Johnson

The true art of memory is the art of attention.
Samuel Johnson

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.
Samuel Johnson

There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.
Samuel Johnson

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.
Samuel Johnson

Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.
Samuel Johnson

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.
Samuel Johnson

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
Samuel Johnson

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

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.
Samuel Johnson

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.
Samuel Johnson

It is better to live rich than to die rich.
Samuel Johnson