Samuel Johnson Quotes

I would consent to have a limb amputated to recover my spirits

The whole of life is but keeping away the thoughts of death.

Expectation improperly indulged in must end in disappointment.

Human life is every where a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

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

The faults of a man loved or honoured sometimes steal secretly and imperceptibly upon the wise and virtuous, but by injudicious fondness or thoughtless vanity are adopted with design.

Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger at his death.

Genius is that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates.

But the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favour, and reason by degrees submits to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness.

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.

Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient passions, and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places: no, 'tis the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can sooth, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared: he who buzzes in her ear at court, or at the opera, must be contented to buzz in vain.

I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the lord chancellor, upon a due consideration of the characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter.

Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.

ADJUTOR (ADJU'TOR) n.s.[adjutor, Lat.] A helper.Dict. ADJUTORY (ADJU'TORY) adj.[adjutorius, Lat.] That which helps.Dict.

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.

If you want to be a writer, then write. Write every day!

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

Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter.

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

I am far from any intention to limit curiosity, or confine the labours of learning to arts of immediate and necessary use. It is only from the various essays of experimental industry, and the vague excursions of mind set upon discovery, that any advancement of knowledge can be expected; and though many must be disappointed in their labours, yet they are not to be charged with having spent their time in vain; their example contributed to inspire emulation, and their miscarriage taught others the way to success.

ADAMS. This is a great work, Sir. How are you to get all the etymologies? JOHNSON. Why, Sir, here is a shelf with Junius, and Skinner, and others; and there is a Welch gentleman who has published a collection of Welch proverbs, who will help me with the Welch. ADAMS. But, Sir, how can you do this in three years? JOHNSON. Sir, I have no doubt that I can do it in three years. ADAMS. But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their Dictionary. JOHNSON. Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.

A second marriage is a triumph of hope over experience

Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.

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.

The good of our present state is merely comparative, and the evil which every man feels will be sufficient to disturb and harass him if he does not know how much he escapes.

To fix the thoughts by writing, and subject them to frequent examinations and reviews, is the best method of enabling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practices on others

My congratulations to you, sir. 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.

The uncertainty of death is, in effect, the great support of the whole system of life.

To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege; to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.

To buried merit rise the tardy bust.

Order is a lovely nymph, the child of Beauty and Wisdom; her attendants are Comfort, Neatness, and Activity; her abode is the valley of happiness: she is always to be found when sought for, and never appears so lovely as when contrasted with her opponent, Disorder.

Dogs have not the power of comparing. A dog will take a small piece of meat as readily as a large, when both are before him.

Words are but the signs of ideas.

A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists without any practical regard to morals and religion; he may be learning not to live but to reason ... while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed.

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

A newswriter is a man without virtue, who lies at home for his own profit.

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

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

Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords; but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain.

Books have always a secret influence on the understanding.

Trust as little as you can to report, and examine all you can by your own senses.

Where there is emulation, there will be vanity; where there is vanity, there will be folly.

In the motive lies the good or ill.

He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.

We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinions because we very often differ from ourselves.

The imaginations excited by the view of an unknown and untravelled wilderness are not such as arise in the artificial solitude of parks and gardens ... The phantoms which haunt a desert are want, and misery, and danger; the evils of dereliction rush upon the thoughts; man is made unwillingly acquainted with his own weakness, and meditation shows him only how little he can sustain, and how little he can perform.

You cannot give me an instance of any man who is permitted to lay out his own time contriving not to have tedious hours.

Exactness is first obtained, and afterwards elegance. But diction, merely vocal, is always in its childhood. As no man leaves his eloquence behind him, the new generations have all to learn. There may possibly be books without a polished language, but there can be no polished language without books.

Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves.

Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.

Those who have past much of their lives in this great city, look upon its opulence and its multitudes, its extent and variety, with cold indifference; but an inhabitant of the remoter parts of the kingdom is immediately distinguished by a kind of dissipated curiosity, a busy endeavour to divide his attention amongst a thousand objects, and a wild confusion of astonishment and alarm.

We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers.

A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.

The diversion of baiting an author has the sanction of all ages and nations, and is more lawful than the sport of teasing other animals, because, for the most part, he comes voluntarily to the stake, furnished, as he imagines, by the patron powers of literature, with resistless weapons, and impenetrable armour, with the mail of the boar of Erymanth, and the paws of the lion of Nemea.

A blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another.

That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments ...

AMBIGU (A'MBIGU) n.s.[French.]An entertainment, consisting not of regular courses, but of a medley of dishes set on together. When straiten'd in your time, and servants few,You'd richly then compose an ambigu;Where first and second course, and your desert,All in our single table have their part.King'sArt of Cookery.

I never take a nap after dinner
but when I have had a bad night,
and then the nap takes me.

The young man, who intends no ill,
Believes that none is intended, and therefore
Acts with openness and candor: but his father, having suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect, and too often allured to practice it.

Consider what importance to society the chastity of women is. Upon that all the property in the world depends. We hang a thief for stealing a sheep; but the unchastity of a woman transfers sheep and farm and all from the right owner.

Among the numerous requisites that must concur to complete an author, few are of more importance than an early entrance into the living world. The seed of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in public. Argumentation may be taught in colleges, and theories formed in retirement; but the artifice of embellishment and the powers of attraction can be gained only by a general converse.

Laws teach us to know when we commit injury and when we suffer it.

The insolence of wealth will creep out.

The duty of criticism is neither to depreciate nor dignify by partial representations, but to hold out the light of reason, whatever it may discover; and to promulgate the determinations of truth, whatever she shall dictate

Among many parallels which men of imagination have drawn between the natural and moral state of the world, it has been observed that happiness as well as virtue consists in mediocrity.

It is not easy to surround life with any circumstances in which youth will not be delightful.

Every author does not write for every reader

I do not much wish well to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will end in conquest and robbery.

In all political regulations, good cannot be complete, it can only be predominant.

Truth has no gradations; nothing which admits of increase can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange. But if a proposition be true, there can be none more true.

Is there such depravity in man as that he should injure another without benefit to himself?

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.

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

No one will persist long in helping someone who will not help themselves.

The perfect day for quitting is not real. It will never come, so might as well start today

There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not know it.

Here I first mounted a little Highland steed; and if there had been many spectators, should have been somewhat ashamed of my figure in the march. The horses of the Islands, as of other barren countries, are very low: they are indeed musculous and strong, beyond what their size gives reason for expecting; but a bulky man upon one of their backs makes a very disproportionate appearance.

If authority be required, let us appeal to Plutarch, the prince of ancient biographers. [Greek: Oute tais epiphanestatais praxesi pantos enesti daelosis aretaes ae kakias, alla pragma brachu pollakis, kai raema, kai paidia tis emphasin aethous epoiaesen mallon ae machai murionekroi, kai parataxeis ai megistai, kai poliorkiai poleon.] Nor is it always in the most distinguished atchievements that men's virtues or vices may be best discerned; but very often an action of small note, a short saying, or a jest, shall distinguish a person's real character more than the greatest sieges, or the most important battles.

Life is but short; no time can be afforded but for the indulgence of real sorry, or contests upon questions seriously momentous. Let us not throw away any of our days upon useless resentment, or contend who shall hold out longest in stubborn malignity. It is best not to be angry; and best, in the next place, to be quickly reconciled.

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

To read, write, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters.

Pleasure that is obtained by unreasonable and unsuitable cost must always end in pain.

To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.

A man sometimes starts up a patriot, only by disseminating discontent, and propagating reports of secret influence, of dangerous counsels, of violated rights, and encroaching usurpation. This practice is no certain note of patriotism. To instigate the populace with rage beyond the provocation, is to suspend public happiness, if not to destroy it. He is no lover of his country, that unnecessarily disturbs its peace.

The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied.

In discussing these exceptions from the course of nature, the first question is, whether the fact be justly stated. That which is strange is delightful, and a pleasing error is not willingly detected.

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

They that have grown old in a single state are generally found to be morose, fretful and captious; tenacious of their own practices and maxims; soon offended by contradiction or negligence; and impatient of any association but with those that will watch their nod, and submit themselves to unlimited authority.

Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation.

It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation from habit; he that has once studiously developed a style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease.

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

John Wesley's conversation is good, but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have his talk out as I do.

In sovereignty there are no gradations.

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

God Himself, sir, does not propose to judge a man until his life is over. Why should you and I?

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.

Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.

Golf is a game in which you claim the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood.