Quotes by Samuel Johnson

I am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.

It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not valued for what they spend.

The vicious count their years; virtuous, their acts.

Pleasure which must be enjoyed at the expense of another's pain, can never be such as a worthy mind can fully delight in.

Judgment is forced upon us by experience.

Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?

A cow is a very good animal in the field, but we turn her out of a garden.

Pride is seldom delicate: it will please itself with very mean advantages.

To have gold is to be in fear, and to want it to be sorrow.

It is a hopeless endeavour to unite the contrarieties of spring and winter; it is unjust to claim the privileges of age, and retain the play-things of childhood.

Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men.

No man is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, his fondness of himself.

The worst evils are those that never arrive.

Of all the griefs that harass the distrest, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.

People in distress never think that you feel enough.

The equity of providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.

Prejudice not being funded on reason cannot be removed by argument.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

Those who marry late are best pleased with their children; and those who marry early, with their partners.

Marriages would be as happy if they were made by the Lord Chancellor without the parties having any choice in the matter.

The gratification of curiosity rather frees us from uneasiness, than confers pleasure. We are more pained by ignorance, than delighted by instruction. Curiosity is the thirst of the soul.

The truth is, that no mind is much employed upon the present recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments.

No mind is much employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up all our moments.

Prudence keeps life safe, but it does not often make it happy.

Poor Sober! I have often teased him with reproof, and lie has often promised reformation: for no man is so much open to conviction as the idler, but there is none on whom it operates so little.

The Supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things -- the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.

The mischief of flattery is, not that it persuades any man that he is what he is not, but that it suppresses the influence of honest ambition, by raising an opinion that honour may be gained without the toil of merit.

Much mischief is done in the world with very little interest or design.

Claret is the liquor for boys; port, for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge, and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things, when they are shown their form or told their use.

Courtesy and good humor are often found with little real worth.

Life admits not of delays; when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it: every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.

City of God, how broad and far Outspread thy walls sublime! The true thy chartered freemen are, Of every age and clime.

A man would rather have a hundred lies told of him than one truth which he does not wish should be known.

The most useful truths are always universal, and unconnected with accidents and customs.

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive.

Age is rarely despised but when it is, contemptible.

Wherever I turned my view, there was perplexity to be disentangled, and confusion to be regulated.

Norway, too, has noble wild prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects.

That observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good.

If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still.

Wheresoe'er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new: Endless labor all along, Endless labor to be wrong: Phrase that Time has flung away; Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.

Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.

It is very common for us to desire most what we are least qualified to obtain.

Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate inquiry whether it is right.

An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty. Men who have practiced tortures on animals without pity, relating them without shame, how can they still hold their heads among human beings?

To be prejudiced is always to be weak; yet there are prejudices so near to laudable that they have been often praised and are always pardoned.

We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.

Though the discoveries or acquisitions of man are not always adequate to the expectations of his pride, they are at least sufficient to animate his industry.

The desires of man increase with his acquisitions.

It is our first duty to serve society.

There is a certain degree of temptation which will overcome any virtue. Now, in so far as you approach temptation to a man, you do him an injury; and, if he is overcome, you share his guilt.

The number of such as live without the ardour of inquiry is very small, though many content themselves with cheap amusements, and waste their lives in researches of no importance.

It is better a man should be abused than forgotten.

There is nothing more dreadful to an author than neglect; compared with which reproach, hatred, and opposition are names of happiness; yet this worst, this meanest fate, every one who dares to write has reason to fear.

Club: An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions.

Avarice is always poor.

The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.

Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.

Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings; let us be therefore cautious of how we strip her.

Whatever advantage we snatch beyond a certain portion allotted us by at nature, is like money spent before it is due, which, at the time of regular payment, will be missed and regretted.

A merchant may, perhaps, be a man of an enlarged mind, but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind.

There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance.

Differences, we know, are never so effectually laid asleep as by some common calamity; an enemy unites all to whom he threatens danger.

No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius.

Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.

Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.

Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty, and of ease, and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health.

It is indeed certain, that whoever attempts any common topick, will find unexpected coincidences of his thoughts with those of other writers; nor can the nicest judgment always distinguish accidental similitude from artful imitation.

Every man speaks and writes with intent to be understood; and it can seldom happen but he that understands himself might convey his notions to another, if, content to be understood, he did not seek to be admired.

Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.

Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey than others, and detected faults and follies which escape vulgar observation.

All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare.

Cunning differs from wisdom as twilight from open day.

Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.

Don't tell me of deception; a lie is a lie, whether it be a lie to the eye or a lie to the ear.

Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind.

Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerales.

No man can fall into contempt but those who deserve it.

Contempt is a kind of gangrene which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.

He was so generally civil, that nobody thanked him for it.

Pity is not natural to man. Children always are cruel. Savages are always cruel.

The traveler that resolutely follows a rough and winding path will sooner reach the end of his journey than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hour of daylight in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages.

The history of mankind is little else than a narrative of designs which have failed and hopes that have been disappointed.

Novel: A small tale, generally of love.

I look upon this as I did upon the Dictionary: it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.

The arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration.

Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence.

A certain amount of distrust is wholesome, but not so much of others as of ourselves; neither vanity not conceit can exist in the same atmosphere with it.

By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen. I hope I see things from a greater distance.

Falsehood always endeavors to copy the mien and attitude of truth.

In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.

But to the particular species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and emulation.

Those authors who would find many readers, must endeavour to please while they instruct.

He that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past years must learn to know the present value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to the ground.

Whoever desires, for his writings or himself, what none can reasonably contemn, the favour of mankind, must add grace to strength, and make his thoughts agreeable as well as useful. Many complain of neglect who never tried to attract regard.

A family ... is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to revolutions.

Faction seldom leaves a man honest, however it might find him.

That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem.

A book should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it.

Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.

It is necessary to the success of flattery, that it be accommodated to particular circumstances or characters, and enter the heart on that side where the passions are ready to receive it.

Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.

No man is without some quality, by the due application of which he might deserve well of the world; and whoever he be that has but little in his power should be in haste to do that little, lest he be confounded with him that can do nothing.

Let him that desires to see others happy, make haste to give while his gift can be enjoyed, and remember that every moment of delay takes away something from the value of his benefaction.

Few things are so liberally bestowed, or squandered with so little effect, as good advice.

Every man that has felt pain knows how little all other comforts can gladden him to whom health is denied. Yet who is there does not sometimes hazard it for the enjoyment of an hour?

Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one.

What is good only because it pleases cannot be pronounced good till it has been found to please.

Words are daughters of earth but ideas are sons of heaven.

Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle; for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence.

If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination.

Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free.

No one ever became great by imitation.

It is a maxim that no man was ever enslaved by influence while he was fit to be free.

A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him.

Inquiries into the heart are not for man.

Sir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is better than admiration, -- judgement, to estimate things at their true value.

Depend upon it, sir, it is when you come close to a man in conservation that you discover what his real abilities are; to make a speech in a public assembly is a knack.

Guilt once harbored in the conscious breast, intimidates the brave, degrades the great.

Diligence in employments of less consequence is the most successful introduction to greater enterprises.

Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.

An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay, And glides in modest innocence away.

Among many parallels which men of imagination have drawn between the natural and moral state of the world, it has been observed that happiness as well as virtue consists in mediocrity.

I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.

Employment and hardships prevent melancholy.

A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed.

He that has once concluded it lawful to resist power, when it wants merit, will soon find a want of merit, to justify his resistance to power.

Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.

Much mischief is done in the world with very little interest or design.

Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed.

It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous.

The most Heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.

If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.

We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.

Most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them.

A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, And touched nothing that he did not adorn.

Nothing is more common than to find men, whose works are now totally neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries as the oracles of their age, and the legislators of science.

Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place.

Admiration must be continued by that novelty which first produces it; and how much soever is given, there must always be reason to imagine that more remains.

Round numbers are always false.

Rash oaths, whether kept or broken, frequently produce guilt.

The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another; and each labors first to impose upon himself and then to propagate the imposture.

He left the name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale.

An exotic and irrational entertainment.