Samuel Johnson Quotes
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Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.
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All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.
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Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.
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Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.
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To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.
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He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.
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Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.
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The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.
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The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.
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I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.
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To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
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In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
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Words are but the signs of ideas.
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My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.
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I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to he right.
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He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
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It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.
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It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.
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It is better to live rich than to die rich.
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Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.
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When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
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There are charms made only for distant admiration.
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A lady once asked him how he came to define 'pastern', the knee of a horse: instead of making an elaborate defence, as might be expected, he at once answered, 'Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance.'
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Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.