Samuel Johnson Quotes
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I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
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Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.
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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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Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.
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The limbs will quiver and move after the soul is gone.
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At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
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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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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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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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Language is the dress of thought.
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Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.
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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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Actions are visible, though motives are secret.
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Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
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Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
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Unmoved though Witlings sneer and Rivals rail, Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail. He scorns the meek address, the suppliant strain. With merit needless, and without it vain. In Reason, Nature, Truth, he dares to trust: Ye Fops, be silent: and ye Wits, be just.
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There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern... No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.
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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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Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.
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I am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.
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Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.
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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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To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.
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He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.