Samuel Johnson Quotes
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Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.
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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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The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life.
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Words are men's daughters, but God's sons are things.
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No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
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There Poetry shall tune her sacred voice,And wake from ignorance the Western World.
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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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'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 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 act of writing itself distracts the thoughts, and what is read twice is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed.
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Employment, sir, and hardships prevent melancholy.
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Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility.
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Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.
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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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A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity.
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Was there ever yet any thing written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress?
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I never have sought the world; the world was not to seek me.
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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!
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Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.
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Some claim a place in the list of patriots, by an acrimonious and unremitting opposition to the court. This mark is by no means infallible. Patriotism is not necessarily included in rebellion. A man may hate his king, yet not love his country.
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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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Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.
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A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.
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The true Genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.