Samuel Johnson Quotes
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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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By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.
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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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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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Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.
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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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No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.
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The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.
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It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.
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And sure th' Eternal Master foundHis single talent well employ'd.
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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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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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Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
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You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
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Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.
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He that would pass the latter part of life with honour and decency, must, when he is young, consider that he shall one day be old; and remember, when he is old, that he has once been young.
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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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Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.
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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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At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
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Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.
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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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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.