Samuel Johnson Quotes
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I know not whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lies.
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Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty, could have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
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It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.
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An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay,And glides in modest innocence away.
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A very unclubable man.
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To convince any man against his will is hard, but to please him against his will is justly pronounced by Dryden to be above the reach of human abilities.
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It might as well be said, 'Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.'
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Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
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Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.
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To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.
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Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties.
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PENSION - An allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.
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Johnson observed, that 'he did not care to speak ill of any man behind his back, but he believed the gentleman was an attorney.'
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Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.
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It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.
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His conversation does not show the minute-hand, but he strikes the hour very correctly.
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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.
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It is seldom that we find either men or places such as we expect them. ... Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.
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Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young.
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Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.
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A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.
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OATS - A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.
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New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.
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Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him; and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive; for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities; as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.