Samuel Johnson Quotes
-
I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.
-
What is easy is seldom excellent.
-
Of Lord Chesterfield This man, I thought, had been a Lord among wits; but, I find, he is only a wit among Lords!
-
Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,And pause a while from learning to be wise.There mark what ills the scholar's life assail - Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.
-
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.
-
I do not know, sir, that the fellow is an infidel; but if he be an infidel, he is an infidel as a dog is an infidel; that is to say, he has never thought upon the subject.
-
Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.
-
In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.
-
One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
-
Sir, your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.
-
When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.
-
There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.
-
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
-
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.
-
So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.
-
I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.
-
I refute it thus.
-
There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified, and new prejudices to be opposed.
-
The Churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.
-
There Poetry shall tune her sacred voice,And wake from ignorance the Western World.
-
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
-
The endearing elegance of female friendship.
-
Hawkesworth said of Johnson, 'You have a memory that would convict any author of plagiarism in any court of literature in the world.'
-
Mrs. Montagu has dropt me. Now, Sir, there are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.