Samuel Johnson Quotes
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We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
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The limbs will quiver and move after the soul is gone.
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A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died: Johnson said, it was the triumph of hope over experience.
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I am glad that he thanks God for anything.
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By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.
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With these celestial Wisdom calms the mind,And makes the happiness she does not find.
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Norway, too, has noble wild prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, Sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!
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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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Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
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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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Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.
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Hell is paved with good intentions.
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One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
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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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The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
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So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.
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It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.
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He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.
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A frame of adamant, a soul of fire,No dangers fright him, and no labors tire.
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All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to shew how much he can spare.
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A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.
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I am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.
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What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
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Blown about with every wind of criticism.