Samuel Johnson Quotes
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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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The limbs will quiver and move after the soul is gone.
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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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Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.
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Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.
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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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Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
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Actions are visible, though motives are secret.
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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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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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Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.
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Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
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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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Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
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I am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.
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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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Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.
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He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.
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Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.
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Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.
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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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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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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.