Samuel Johnson Quotes
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There is now less flogging in our great schools than formerly, but then less is learned there; so that what the boys get at one end they lose at the other.
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In misery's darkest cavern known,His useful care was ever nighWhere hopeless anguish pour'd his groan,And lonely want retir'd to die.
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'I fly from pleasure,' said the prince, 'because pleasure has ceased to please; I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others.'
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The act of writing itself distracts the thoughts, and what is read twice is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed.
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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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So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.
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The Churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.
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The endearing elegance of female friendship.
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Employment, sir, and hardships prevent melancholy.
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A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.
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'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.
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A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity.
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I refute it thus.
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The true Genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
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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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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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I never have sought the world; the world was not to seek me.
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If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.
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Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.
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Mrs. Montagu has dropt me. Now, Sir, there are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.
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Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.
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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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Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.
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Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.