Samuel Johnson Quotes
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Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.
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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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Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?
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Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
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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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The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honourable gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience.
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The insolence of wealth will creep out.
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Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance and the parent of Liberty.
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Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.
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But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in few words.
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Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
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Johnson said that he could repeat a complete chapter of 'The Natural History of Iceland' from the Danish of Horrebow, the whole of which was exactly thus: 'There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.' 62 Chap. lxxii.
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There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.
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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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When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.
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Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.
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The future is purchased by the present.
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A frame of adamant, a soul of fire,No dangers fright him, and no labors tire.
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I remember very well, when I was at Oxford, an old gentleman said to me, 'Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowledge; for when years come upon you, you will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome task.'
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Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.
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Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious.
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Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.
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Attack is the reaction; I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds.
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Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.