Quotes by Samuel Johnson
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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.

This is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery.

Pendantry is the unseasonable ostentation of learning. It may be discovered either in the choice of a subject or in the manner d treating it.

Languages are the pedigree of nations.

No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had.

Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding.

Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss.

The true effect of genuine politeness seems to be rather ease than pleasure.

Excise: A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.

The drama's laws the drama's patrons give.

For we that live to please must please to live.

When any fit of gloominess, or perversion of mind, lays hold upon you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaints, but exert your whole care to hide it; by endeavouring to hide it; you will dry it away. Be always busy.

Each person's work is always a portrait of himself.

I have two very cogent reasons for not printing any list of subscribers; one, that I have lost all the names, the other, that I have spent all the money.

None can be pleased without praise, and few can be praised without falsehood.

He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience. We have always protected the Americans; we may therefore subject them to government.

Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most.

As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time; but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law; that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles.

Instead of rating the man by his performances, we rate too frequently the performances by the man.

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

It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination.

Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.

Turn on the prudent
Ant, thy heedful eyes,
Observe her labours,
Sluggard, and be wise.

Ah! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him.

As long as one lives he will have need of repentance.

Repentance, however difficult to be practiced, is, if it be explained without superstition, easily understood. Repentance is the relinquishment of any practice from the conviction that it has offended God.

Let us be quick to repent of injuries while repentance may not be a barren anguish.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

Resentment gratifies him who intended an injury, and pains him unjustly who did not intend it.

Leave to Heaven the measure and the choice.

Riches are of no value in themselves; their use is discovered only in that which they procure.

Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.

He to whom many objects of pursuit arise at the same time, will frequently hesitate between different desires till a rival has precluded him, or change his course as new attractions prevail, and harass himself without advancing.

I do not much wish well to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will end in conquest and robbery.

Everybody knows worse of himself than he knows of other men.

The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.

There are occasions on which all apology is rudeness.

Spite and ill-nature are among the most expensive luxuries in life.

Shakespeare never had six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven, but this does not refute my general assertion.

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied.

Foppery is never cured; it is the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, are never rectified; once a coxcomb always a coxcomb.

Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favourable to virtue. Remember that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad.

No man reads a book of science from pure inclination. The books that we do read with pleasure are light compositions, which contain a quick succession of events.

He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.

Curiosity is the thirst of the soul.

As pride sometimes is hid under humility, idleness if often covered by turbulence and hurry.

There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.

I believe it will be found that those who marry late are best pleased with their children; and those who marry early, with their partners.