Samuel Johnson Quotes
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Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?
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What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
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Hawkesworth said of Johnson, 'You have a memory that would convict any author of plagiarism in any court of literature in the world.'
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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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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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In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.
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Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.
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This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confessed - Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed.
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A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.
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No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
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Attack is the reaction; I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds.
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Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
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Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
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Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.
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The poet must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.
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Round numbers are always false.
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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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We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
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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.
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There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.
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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.
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The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.
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What is easy is seldom excellent.
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The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.