Quotes by Samuel Johnson
Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Grief is a species of idleness.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
In a man's letters his soul lies naked.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
The vicious count their years; virtuous, their acts.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Wine gives a man nothing. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess, and to gain applause which he cannot keep.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Whoever envies another confesses his superiority.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
A cow is a very good animal in the field, but we turn her out of a garden.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
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.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
With an unquiet mind, neither exercise, nor diet, nor physick can be of much use.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
When any fit of gloominess, or perversion of mind, lays hold upon you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaints.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness, of captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords; but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Classical quotation is a parole of literary men all over the world.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Knock the "t" off the "can't."
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
How many may a man of diffusive conversation count among his acquaintances, whose lives have been signalized by numberless escapes; who never cross the river but in a storm, or take a journey into the country without more adventures than befel the knights-errant of ancient times in pathless forests or enchanted castles! How many must he know, to whom portents and prodigies are of daily occurrence; and for whom nature is hourly working wonders invisible to every other eye, only to supply them with subjects of conversation?
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
It is generally agreed, that few men are made better by affluence or exaltation.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Human beings of all societies in all periods of history believe that their ideas on the nature of the real world are the most secure, and that their ideas on religion, ethics and justice are the most enlightened. Like us, they think that final knowledge i
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
This is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free.
Link to Quote
Samuel Johnson Quotes