Samuel Johnson Quotes
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Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.
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He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
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Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.
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I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
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At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
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The limbs will quiver and move after the soul is gone.
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Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.
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Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed.
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No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.
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Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.
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The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.
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Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.
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Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
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Actions are visible, though motives are secret.
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Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.
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You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, 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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Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
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With these celestial Wisdom calms the mind,And makes the happiness she does not find.
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Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.
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Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.
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Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.
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I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.
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I never take a nap after dinner but when I have had a bad night; and then the nap takes me.
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Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.