Samuel Johnson Quotes
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All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to shew how much he can spare.
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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.
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He that would pass the latter part of life with honour and decency, must, when he is young, consider that he shall one day be old; and remember, when he is old, that he has once been young.
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Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.
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He that overvalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.
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Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility.
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Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and... the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.
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No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.
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Ah! let not Censure term our fate our choice, The stage but echoes back the public's voice; The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, For we that live to please must please to live.
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As I know more of mankind, I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly.
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Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.
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As the Spanish proverb says, 'He, who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.' So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.
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How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
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It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.
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Let observation with extensive viewSurvey mankind, from China to Peru.
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The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
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He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dullness in others.
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Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any high degree; only about as much as is used in the lower kinds of poetry.
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The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.
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A desire for knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every human being, whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all he has to get knowledge.
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I have two very cogent reasons for not printing any list of subscribers; - one, that I have lost all the names, - the other, that I have spent all the money.
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'Paradise Lost' is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.
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A Frenchman must be always talking, whether he knows anything of the matter or not; an Englishman is content to say nothing, when he has nothing to say.
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The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.