Samuel Johnson Quotes
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There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.
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A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly.
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I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.
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No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had.
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My friend was of opinion that when a man of rank appeared in that character as an author, he deserved to have his merit handsomely allowed.
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I Boswell happened to say, it would be terrible if he should not find a speedy opportunity of returning to London, and be confined in so dull a place. JOHNSON: 'Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters. It would not be terrible, though I were to be detained some time here.'
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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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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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Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young.
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No man is much pleased with a companion, who does not increase, in some respect, his fondness for himself.
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That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.
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It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.
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Shakspeare never has six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven: but this does not refute my general assertion.
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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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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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A very unclubable man.
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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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Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.
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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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A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian,Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched,And touched nothing that he did not adorn.
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EXCISE - A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.
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The first years of man must make provision for the last.
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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.