Samuel Johnson Quotes
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A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.
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There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.
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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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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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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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Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.
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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.
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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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It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.
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Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition.
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Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanicks laughs at strength.
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Superfluous lags the vet'ran on the stage.
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GRUBSTREET - The name of a street near Moorsfield, London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems.
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Pleasure of itself is not a vice.
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From Thee, great God: we spring, to Thee we tend,Path, motive, guide, original, and end.
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It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.
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Sir, you have but two topicks, yourself and me. I am sick of both.
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You see they'd have fitted him to a T.
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For patience, sov'reign o'er transmuted ill.
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A man might write such stuff for ever, if he would abandon his mind to it.
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He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning.
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Slavery is now no where more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.
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Then with no throbs of fiery pain,No cold gradations of decay,Death broke at once the vital chain,And freed his soul the nearest way.
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To a poet nothing can be useless.