Samuel Johnson Quotes
-
Life admits not of delays; when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.
-
Was ever poet so trusted before?
-
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.
-
It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.
-
Catch then, O! catch the transient hour, Improve each moment as it flies; Life's a short Summer - man a flower, He dies - alas! how soon he dies!
-
This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confessed - Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed.
-
I have, all my life long, been lying till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good.
-
A fellow that makes no figure in company, and has a mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar-cruet.
-
Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies.
-
But, scarce observ'd, the knowing and the boldFall in the gen'ral massacre of gold.
-
So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.
-
That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?
-
LEXICOGRAPHER - A writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.
-
Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.
-
I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.
-
Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
-
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 joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be renewed by intervals of absence.
-
By Numbers here from Shame or Censure free,All Crimes are safe, but hated Poverty.This, only this, the rigid Law persues,This, only this, provokes the snarling Muse.
-
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
-
While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
-
Cold approbation gave the ling'ring bays,For those who durst not censure, scarce could praise.
-
'Some,' answered Imlac, 'have indeed said that the soul is material, but I can scarcely believe that any man has thought it, who knew how to think; for all the conclusions of reason enforce the immateriality of mind, and all the notices of sense and investigations of science, concur to prove the unconsciousness of matter.
-
All this wealth excludes but one evil,-poverty.