Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Samuel Johnson, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Samuel Johnson quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 1526 Samuel Johnson quotes for you to read and share.
Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age. -- Samuel Johnson
No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius. -- Samuel Johnson
Most men are unwilling to be taught. -- Samuel Johnson
Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance. -- Samuel Johnson
Read the book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read. -- Samuel Johnson
There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten. -- Samuel Johnson
When we see our enemies and friends gliding away before us, let us not forget that we are subject to the general law of mortality, and shall soon be where our doom will be fixed forever. -- Samuel Johnson
Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength. -- Samuel Johnson
He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dulness in others. -- Samuel Johnson
He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions. -- Samuel Johnson
I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian. -- Samuel Johnson
We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide. -- Samuel Johnson
Unnumbered suppliants crowd Preferment's gate
Athirst for wealth, and burning to be great;
Delusive Fortune hears th' incessant call,
They mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall. -- Samuel Johnson
Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice. -- Samuel Johnson
Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others. -- Samuel Johnson
Admiration begins where acquaintance ceases -- Samuel Johnson
He said that few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forgo the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive how to fill the interval between dinner and supper. -- Samuel Johnson
He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed. The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich. -- Samuel Johnson
I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. -- Samuel Johnson
Pension: An allowance made to anyone without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country. -- Samuel Johnson
Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor. -- Samuel Johnson
Luncheon: as much food as one's hand can hold. -- Samuel Johnson
I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow. -- Samuel Johnson
When a man marries a widow his jealousies revert to the past: no man is as good as his wife says her first husband was -- Samuel Johnson
Among the lower classes of mankind there will be found very little desire of any other knowledge than what may contribute immediately to the relief of some pressing uneasiness, or the attainment of some near advantage. -- Samuel Johnson
No man tells his opinion so freely as when he imagines it received with implicit veneration. -- Samuel Johnson
ANT (ANT) n.s.[aemett, Sax. which Junius imagines, not without probability, to have been first contracted to aemt, and then softened to ant.]An emmet; a pismire. A small insect that lives in great numbers together in hillocks. -- Samuel Johnson
Of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished. -- Samuel Johnson
Smoking is a shocking thing - blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eyes, and noses, and having the same thing done to us. -- Samuel Johnson
People in distress never think that you feel enough. -- Samuel Johnson
We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes? -- Samuel Johnson
If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim. -- Samuel Johnson
Pleasure that is obtained by unreasonable and unsuitable cost must always end in pain. -- Samuel Johnson
Reflect that life, like every other blessing,
Derives its value from its use alone. -- Samuel Johnson
None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence. -- Samuel Johnson
This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts. -- Samuel Johnson
He bemoans our miseries with the tender pity of a Cowper, who, in warning us of life's grovelling pursuits and empty joys, seeks, by withdrawing us from their delusive dominion, to prepare us for "another and a better world." No. -- Samuel Johnson
Lichfield, England. Swallows certainly sleep all winter. A number of them conglobulate together, by flying round and round, and then all in a heap throw themselves under water, and lye in the bed of a river. -- Samuel Johnson
To go and see one druidical temple is only to see that it is nothing, for there is neither art nor power in it; and seeing one is quite enough. -- Samuel Johnson
History can be formed from permanent monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost forever. -- Samuel Johnson
I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself. -- Samuel Johnson
The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy. -- Samuel Johnson
The hopes of zeal are not wholly groundless. -- Samuel Johnson
Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged. -- Samuel Johnson
Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles; do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind. -- Samuel Johnson
That distrust which intrudes so often on your mind is a mode of melancholy, which, if it be the business of a wise man to be happy, it is foolish to indulge; and if it be a duty to preserve our faculties entire for their proper use, it is criminal. Suspicion is very often an useless pain. -- Samuel Johnson
When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency. -- Samuel Johnson
Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter. -- Samuel Johnson
ANKER (A'NKER) n.s.[ancker, Dut.] A liquid measure chiefly used at Amsterdam. It is the fourth part of the awm, and contains two stekans: each stekan consists of sixteen mengles; the mengle being equal -- Samuel Johnson
Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place. -- Samuel Johnson
The two offices of memory are collection and distribution. -- Samuel Johnson
"I fly from pleasure," said the prince, "because pleasure has ceased to please; I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others." -- Samuel Johnson
It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see. -- Samuel Johnson
Life of Ages, richly poured,
Love of God unspent and free,
Flowing in the Prophet's word
And the People's liberty!
Never was to chosen race
That unstinted tide confined;
Thine is every time and place,
Fountain sweet of heart and mind! -- Samuel Johnson
Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings because they are his own. -- Samuel Johnson
Friendship, peculiar boon of Heaven, The noble mind's delight and pride, To men and angels only given, To all the lower world denied. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
Catechism.3. Recovery of health. Your honour's players hearing your amendment,Are come to play a pleasant comedy.Shakesp.Tam. Shrew. -- Samuel Johnson
In my early years I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now. -- Samuel Johnson
For who is pleased with himself. -- Samuel Johnson
Dogs have not the power of comparing. A dog will take a small piece of meat as readily as a large, when both are before him. -- Samuel Johnson
I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. -- Samuel Johnson
In traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge. -- Samuel Johnson
He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him. -- Samuel Johnson
If I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him. -- Samuel Johnson
He that is warm for truth, and fearless in its defense, performs one of the duties of a good man; he strenghtens his own conviction, and guards others from delusion; but steadiness of belief, and boldness of profession, are yet only part of the form of godliness. -- Samuel Johnson
When emulation leads us to strive for self-elevation by merit alone, and not by belittling another, then it is one of the grandest possible incentives to action. -- Samuel Johnson
Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us. -- Samuel Johnson
Never, my dear Sir, do you take it into your head that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and my esteem; I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of exemplary piety. -- Samuel Johnson
Any of us would kill a cow rather than not have beef. -- Samuel Johnson
I love the acquaintance of young people; because, in the first place, I do not like to think myself growing old. In the next place, young acquaintances must last longest, if they do last; and then, sir, young men have more virtue than old men; they have more generous sentiments in every respect. -- Samuel Johnson
It requires but little acquaintance with the heart to know that woman's first wish is to be handsome; and that, consequently, the readiest method of obtaining her kindness is to praise her beauty. -- Samuel Johnson
If the man who turnips cries, Cry not when his father dies, 'Tis proof that he had rather Have a turnip than his father. -- Samuel Johnson
Marriage is the strictest tie of perpetual friendship, and there can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity; and he must expect to be wretched, who pays to beauty, riches, or politeness that regard which only virtue and piety can claim. -- Samuel Johnson
Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters. -- Samuel Johnson
By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen. I hope I see things from a greater distance. -- Samuel Johnson
Now ... that you are going to marry, do not expect more from life, than life will afford. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
Care that is once enter'd into the breast
Will have the whole possession ere it rest. -- Samuel Johnson
It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability. -- Samuel Johnson
It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy and yet unenvied, to be healthy with physic, secure without a guard, and to obtain from the bounty of nature what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of art. -- Samuel Johnson
Human life is every where a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed. -- Samuel Johnson
The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England! -- Samuel Johnson
There is nothing by which a man exasperates most people more, than displaying a superior ability of briliancy in conversation. They seem pleased at the time; but their envy makes them curse him at their hearts. -- Samuel Johnson
Books without the knowledge of life are useless. -- Samuel Johnson
Men are most powerfully affected by those evils which themselves feel, or which appear before their own eyes. -- Samuel Johnson
The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is to attempt but little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made by short flights frequently repeated; the most lofty fabrics of science are formed by the continued accumulation of single propositions. -- Samuel Johnson
Those authors who would find many readers, must endeavour to please while they instruct. -- Samuel Johnson
In life's last scene what prodigies surprise,
Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise!
From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow,
And Swift expires a driveller and a show. -- Samuel Johnson
When a king asked Euclid, the mathematician, whether he could not explain his art to him in a more compendious manner? he was answered, that there was no royal way to geometry. -- Samuel Johnson
Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions. -- Samuel Johnson
My nights are flatulent and unquiet. -- Samuel Johnson
What agreement is there between the hyena and the dog? and what peace between the rich and the poor?BibleEcclus,xiii. 18.2. -- Samuel Johnson
A man must assume the moral burden of his own boredom. -- Samuel Johnson
AMENTACEOUS (AMENTA'CEOUS) adj.[amentatus, Lat.]Hanging as by a thread. The pine tree hath amentaceous flowers or katkins.Miller. -- Samuel Johnson
The really happy woman is the one who can enjoy the scenery when she has to take a detour. Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but rather a manner of traveling. -- Samuel Johnson
It will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor. -- Samuel Johnson
Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again. -- Samuel Johnson
The imitator treads a beaten walk, and with all his diligence can only find a few flowers or branches untouched by his predecessor, the refuse of contempt, or the omissions of negligence. -- Samuel Johnson
But the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favour, and reason by degrees submits to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness. -- Samuel Johnson
Whoever rises above those who once pleased themselves with equality, will have many malevolent gazers at his eminence. -- Samuel Johnson
The most useful truths are always universal, and unconnected with accidents and customs. -- Samuel Johnson
Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea. -- Samuel Johnson
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away. -- Samuel Johnson
Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out. -- Samuel Johnson
Sir, they are a race of convicts and ought to be grateful for anything we allow them short of hanging. -- Samuel Johnson
Pity is not natural to man. Children and savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason. We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in distress, without pity; but we have not pity unless we wish to relieve him. -- Samuel Johnson
Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words. -- Samuel Johnson
Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles. -- Samuel Johnson
Such are the vicissitudes of the world, through all its parts, that day and night, labor and rest, hurry and retirement, endear each other; such are the changes that keep the mind in action: we desire, we pursue, we obtain, we are satiated; we desire something else and begin a new pursuit. -- Samuel Johnson
Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation. -- Samuel Johnson
Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present. -- Samuel Johnson
I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much. -- Samuel Johnson
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise. -- Samuel Johnson
I wish you would add an index rerum, that when the reader recollects any incident he may easily find it. -- Samuel Johnson
Of riches it is not necessary to write the praise. Let it, however, be remembered that he who has money to spare has it always in his power to benefit others, and of such power a good man must always be desirous. -- Samuel Johnson
In civilized society external advantages make us more respected. A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one. You may analyze this and say, What is there in it? But that will avail you nothing, for it is a part of a general system. -- Samuel Johnson
There is no temper more unpropitious to interest than desultory application and unlimited inquiry, by which the desires are held in a perpetual equipoise, and the mind fluctuates between different purposes without determination. -- Samuel Johnson
There is a frightful interval between the seed and the timber. -- Samuel Johnson
Misery is caused for the most part, not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the corrosion of less visible evils, which canker enjoyment, and undermine security. The visit of an invader is necessarily rare, but domestic animosities allow no cessation. -- Samuel Johnson
There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse. -- Samuel Johnson
A man finds in the productions of nature an inexhaustible stock of material on which he can employ himself, without any temptations to envy or malevolence, and has always a certain prospect of discovering new reasons for adoring the sovereign author of the universe. -- Samuel Johnson
Every reader should remember the diffidence of Socrates, and repair by his candour the injuries of time: he should impute the seeming defects of his author to some chasm of intelligence, and suppose that the sense which is now weak was once forcible -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly! -- Samuel Johnson
Ah! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him. -- Samuel Johnson
Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favour. -- Samuel Johnson
It would add much to human happiness, if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at once useless and afflictive, that the mind might perform its functions without encumbrance, and the past might no longer encroach upon the present. -- Samuel Johnson
Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it. -- Samuel Johnson
I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am. -- Samuel Johnson
Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper. -- Samuel Johnson
Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off. -- Samuel Johnson
Luxury, so far as it reaches the people, will do good to the race of people; it will strengthen and multiply them. Sir, no nation was ever hurt by luxury; for, as I said before; it can reach but a very few. -- Samuel Johnson
Riches are of no value in themselves; their use is discovered only in that which they procure. -- Samuel Johnson
Pride is undoubtedly the original of anger; but pride, like every other passion, if it once breaks loose from reason, counteracts its own purposes. -- Samuel Johnson
Philips, whose touch harmonious could remove The pangs of guilty power and hapless love! Rest here, distress'd by poverty no more; Here find that calm thou gav'st so oft before; Sleep undisturb'd within this peaceful shrine, Till angels wake thee with a note like thine! -- Samuel Johnson
I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed. -- Samuel Johnson
High people, sir, are the best; take a hundred ladies of quality, you'll find them better wives, better mothers, more willing to sacrifice their own pleasures to their children, than a hundred other woman. -- Samuel Johnson
Many leave the labours of half their life to their executors and to chance, because they will not send them abroad unfinished, and are unable to finish them, having prescribed to themselves such a degree of exactness as human diligence can scarcely ontain. -- Samuel Johnson
The opinions prevalent in one age, as truths above the reach of controversy, are confuted and rejected in another, and rise again to reception in remoter times. Thus the human mind is kept in motion without progress. -- Samuel Johnson
The uncertainty of death is, in effect, the great support of the whole system of life. -- Samuel Johnson
The disturbers of happiness are our desires, our griefs, and our fears. -- Samuel Johnson
Depend on it, I will defend this little citadel to the utmost. -- Samuel Johnson
Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious. -- Samuel Johnson
A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him. -- Samuel Johnson
Politeness is fictitious benevolence. Depend upon it, the want of it never fails to produce something disagreeable to one or other. -- Samuel Johnson
Memory is like all other human powers, with which no man can be satisfied who measures them by what he can conceive, or by what he can desire. -- Samuel Johnson
Is not a patron my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? -- Samuel Johnson
Falsehood always endeavors to copy the mien and attitude of truth. -- Samuel Johnson
The highest panegyric, therefore, that private virtue can receive, is the praise of servants. -- Samuel Johnson
All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own, and if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it. -- Samuel Johnson
The duty of criticism is neither to depreciate nor dignify by partial representations, but to hold out the light of reason, whatever it may discover; and to promulgate the determinations of truth, whatever she shall dictate -- Samuel Johnson
Of those that spin out trifles and die without a memorial, many flatter themselves with high opinions of their own importance, and imagine that they are every day adding some improvement to human life. -- Samuel Johnson
Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn.
[Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit; nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.] -- Samuel Johnson
A coxcomb is ugly all over with the effectation of a fine gentleman. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence. -- Samuel Johnson
Order is a lovely nymph, the child of Beauty and Wisdom; her attendants are Comfort, Neatness, and Activity; her abode is the valley of happiness: she is always to be found when sought for, and never appears so lovely as when contrasted with her opponent, Disorder. -- Samuel Johnson
A second marriage is a triumph of hope over experience -- Samuel Johnson
Books have always a secret influence on the understanding. -- Samuel Johnson
About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right. -- Samuel Johnson
From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,- Path, motive, guide, original, and end. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
You think I love flattery (says Dr. Johnson), and so I do; but a little too much always disgusts me: that fellow Richardson, on the contrary, could not be contented to sail quietly down the stream of reputation, without longing to taste the froth from every stroke of the oar. -- Samuel Johnson
He that floats lazily down the stream, in pursuit of something borne along by the same current, will find himself indeed moved forward; but unless he lays his hand to the oar, and increases his speed by his own labour, must be always at the same distance from that which he is following. -- Samuel Johnson
He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale. -- Samuel Johnson
It is surely very narrow policy that supposes money to be the chief good. -- Samuel Johnson
If misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill-fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced. -- Samuel Johnson
If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons. -- Samuel Johnson
It is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilised society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together. -- Samuel Johnson
To keep your secret is wisdom, but to expect others to keep it is folly. -- Samuel Johnson
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 value for what they spend. -- Samuel Johnson
They who have already enjoyed the crowds and noise of the great city, know their desire to return is little more than the restlessness of a vacant mind, that they are not so much led by hope as driven by disgust, and wish rather to leave the country than to see the town. -- Samuel Johnson
Sir, you must not neglect doing a thing immediately good from fear of remote evil; -from fear of its being abused. -- Samuel Johnson
Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last. -- Samuel Johnson
Nothing concentrates one's mind so much as the realization that one is going to be hanged in the morning! -- Samuel Johnson
Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. -- Samuel Johnson
What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it; for folly doesn't deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect. -- Samuel Johnson
Quack: A boastful pretender to arts which he does not understand. A vain boastful pretender to physick; An artful, tricking practitioner in physick. -- Samuel Johnson
Reason and truth will prevail at last -- Samuel Johnson
[W]ith an unquiet mind, neither exercise, nor diet, nor physick can be of much use. -- Samuel Johnson
Few moments are more pleasing than those in which the mind is concerting measures for a new undertaking. -- Samuel Johnson
There may be community of material possessions, but there can never be community of love or esteem. -- Samuel Johnson
Suspicion is most often useless pain. -- Samuel Johnson
To build is to be robbed. -- Samuel Johnson
Slander is the revenge of a coward, and dissimulation of his defense. -- Samuel Johnson
There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful. -- Samuel Johnson
It is better to live rich than to die rich. -- Samuel Johnson
Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly placed within our reach. -- Samuel Johnson
Your aspirations are your possibilities. -- Samuel Johnson
Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt. -- Samuel Johnson
Governors being accustomed to hear of more crimes than they can punish, and more wrongs than they can redress, set themselves at ease by indiscriminate negligence, and presently forget the request when they lose sight of the petitioner. -- Samuel Johnson
Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true. -- Samuel Johnson
If you want to be a writer, then write. Write every day! -- Samuel Johnson
Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy. -- Samuel Johnson
A person loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal. -- Samuel Johnson
It is to be steadily inculcated, that virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
He who makes a beast out of himself removes himself from the pain of being human -- Samuel Johnson
ACCEPTATION (ACCEPTA'TION) n.s.[from accept.]1. Reception, whether good or bad. This large sense seems now wholly out of use. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
A family ... is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to revolutions. -- Samuel Johnson
Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend. -- Samuel Johnson
Women can spin very well, but they cannot write a good book of cookery. -- Samuel Johnson
Yet reason frowns in war's unequal game,
Where wasted nations raise a single name;
And mortgag'd states their grandsire's wreaths regret,
From age to age in everlasting debt;
Wreaths which at last the dear-bought right convey
To rust on medals, or on stones decay. -- Samuel Johnson
Year chases year, decay pursues decay,
Still drops some joy from with'ring life away;
New forms arise, and diff'rent views engage -- Samuel Johnson
Was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress? -- Samuel Johnson
It is almost always the unhappiness of a victorious disputant to destroy his own authority by claiming too many consequences, or diffusing his proposition to an indefensible extent. -- Samuel Johnson
Truth has no gradations; nothing which admits of increase can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange. But if a proposition be true, there can be none more true. -- Samuel Johnson
Of the present state, whatever it be, we feel and are forced to confess the misery; yet when the same state is again at a distance, imagination paints it as desirable. -- Samuel Johnson
How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.
Still to ourselves in every place consign'd,
Our own felicity we make or find: -- Samuel Johnson
What signifies protesting so against flattery when a person speaks well of one, it must either be true or false, you know if true, let us rejoice in his good opinion if he lies, it is a proof at least that he loves more to please me, than to sit s -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
The future is bought with the present. -- Samuel Johnson
Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil but its duty, like that of other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it. It should not be suffered to tyrannize in the imagination, to raise phantoms of horror, or to beset life with supernumerary distresses. -- Samuel Johnson
ABNODATION (ABNODA'TION) n.s.[abnodatio, Lat.] The act of cutting away knots from trees;a term of gardening.Dict. -- Samuel Johnson
Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest. -- Samuel Johnson
No wonder, Sir, that he is vain; a man who is perpetually flattered in every mode that can be conceived. So many bellows have blown the fire, that one wonders he is not by this time become a cinder. -- Samuel Johnson
Domestic discord is not inevitably and fatally necessary; but yet it is not easy to avoid. -- Samuel Johnson
No man is obliged to do as much as he can do. A man is to have part of his life to himself. -- Samuel Johnson
Life, however short, is made still shorter by waste of time. -- Samuel Johnson
AMEL (A'MEL) n.s.[email, Fr.]The matter with which the variegated works are overlaid, which we call enamelled. The materials of glass melted with calcined tin, compose an undiaphanous body. This white amel is the basis of all those fine concretes that goldsmiths and artificers -- Samuel Johnson
To embarrass justice by multiplicity of laws, or to hazard it by confidence in judges, seem to be the opposite rocks on which all civil institutions have been wrecked, and between which legislative wisdom has never yet found an open passage. -- Samuel Johnson
The business of life is to go forward; he who sees evil in prospect meets it in his way, and he who catches it by retrospection turns back to find it. That which is feared may sometimes be avoided, but that which is regretted to-day may be regretted again to-morrow. -- Samuel Johnson
Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach. -- Samuel Johnson
What I gained by being in France was learning to be better satisfied with my own country. -- Samuel Johnson
A hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has, for twenty years, diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and, with tea, welcomes the morning. -- Samuel Johnson
Gratitude is a species of justice. -- Samuel Johnson
That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not only be equal virtue on each part, but virtue of the same kind; not only the same end must be proposed, but the same means must be approved by both. -- Samuel Johnson
Whoever commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him who he deceives, but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society. -- Samuel Johnson
Every man has frequent grievances which only the solicitude of friendship will discover and remedy, and which would remain for ever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it only surveyed by the eye of general benevolence equally attentive to every misery. -- Samuel Johnson
We may have many acquaintances, but we can have but few friends; this made Aristotle say that he that hath many friends hath none. -- Samuel Johnson
Every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge. -- Samuel Johnson
Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know That life protracted is protracted woe. -- Samuel Johnson
When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live. -- Samuel Johnson
If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman. -- Samuel Johnson
Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage. -- Samuel Johnson
The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence. -- Samuel Johnson
Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice. -- Samuel Johnson
The king who makes war on his enemies tenderly distresses his subjects most cruelly. -- Samuel Johnson
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne. -- Samuel Johnson
In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness - inspissated gloom. -- Samuel Johnson
I deny the lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of alarming him; you have no business with consequences, you are to tell the truth. -- Samuel Johnson
I respect Millar: he has raised the price of literature -- Samuel Johnson
ALPHA (A'LPHA) n.s.The first letter in the Greek alphabet, answering to our A; therefore used to signify the first. I am alpha and omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.BibleRevelat. -- Samuel Johnson
The liberty of using harmless pleasure will not be disputed; but it is still to be examined what pleasures are harmless. -- Samuel Johnson
Such, said Nekayah, is the state of life, none are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish it to change again. The world is not yet exhausted. Let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before. -- Samuel Johnson
Guilt has always its horrors and solicitudes; and, to make it yet more shameful and detestable, it is doomed often to stand in awe of those to whom nothing could give influence or weight but their power of betraying. -- Samuel Johnson
You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe. -- Samuel Johnson
The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendor cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate. -- Samuel Johnson
Scarcely any degree of judgment is sufficient to restrain the imagination from magnifying that on which it is long detained -- Samuel Johnson
AFFUSION (AFFU'SION) n.s.[affusio, Lat.]The act of pouring one thing upon another. Upon the affusion of a tincture of galls, it immediately became as black as ink.Grew'sMusaeum. -- Samuel Johnson
As a madman is apt to think himself grown suddenly great, so he that grows suddenly great is apt to borrow a little from the madman. -- Samuel Johnson
The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated. -- Samuel Johnson
Language is the dress of thought; and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
A man guilty of poverty easily believes himself suspected. -- Samuel Johnson
I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the lord chancellor, upon a due consideration of the characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
If we will have the kindness of others, we must endure their follies -- Samuel Johnson
To tell your own secrets is generally folly, but that folly is without guilt; to communicate those with which we are intrusted is always treachery, and treachery for the most part combined with folly. -- Samuel Johnson
Everybody knows worse of himself than he knows of other men. -- Samuel Johnson
Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss. -- Samuel Johnson
The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends. -- Samuel Johnson
As soon as I enter the door of a tavern, I experience oblivion of care, and a freedom from solicitude. There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn. -- Samuel Johnson
Parents are by no means exempt from the intoxication of dominion. -- Samuel Johnson
The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new. -- Samuel Johnson
Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures. -- Samuel Johnson
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
Men who could willingly resign the luxuries and sensual pleasures of a large fortune cannot consent to live without the grandeur and the homage. -- Samuel Johnson
Spite and ill-nature are among the most expensive luxuries in life. -- Samuel Johnson
Genius is that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates. -- Samuel Johnson
My congratulations to you, sir. Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good. -- Samuel Johnson
Ignorance cannot always be inferred from inaccuracy; knowledge is not always present. -- Samuel Johnson
Enquirer, cease, Petitions yet remain,
Which Heav'n may hear, nor deem Religion vain.
Still raise for Good the supplicating Voice,
But leave to Heav'n the Measure and the Choice. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings. -- Samuel Johnson
It very seldom happens to a man that his business is his pleasure. -- Samuel Johnson
Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest. -- Samuel Johnson
In Shakespeare's plays, the mourner hastening to bury his friend is all the time colliding with the reveller hastening to his wine. -- Samuel Johnson
Occupation alone is happiness. -- Samuel Johnson
Cunning differs from wisdom as twilight from open day. -- Samuel Johnson
AGONISTES (AGONI'STES) n.s.[ Gr.]A prize-fighter; one that contends at any public solemnity for a prize. Milton has so stiled his tragedy, because Sampson was called out to divert the Philistines with feats of strength. -- Samuel Johnson
Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect. -- Samuel Johnson
Love has no great influences upon the sum of life. -- Samuel Johnson
Pound St. Paul's Church into atoms, and consider any single atom; it is to be sure, good for nothing; but put all these atoms together, and you have St. Paul's Church. So it is with human felicity, which is made up of many ingredients, each of which may be shown to be very insignificant. -- Samuel Johnson
Attack is the reaction. I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds. -- Samuel Johnson
We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor -- Samuel Johnson
Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
Ease, a neutral state between pain and pleasure ... if it is not rising into pleasure will be falling towards pain. -- Samuel Johnson
Cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out. -- Samuel Johnson
I have found the world kinder than I expected, but less just. -- Samuel Johnson
Round numbers are always false. -- Samuel Johnson
Friendship is seldom lasting but between equals, or where the superiority on one side is reduced by some equivalent advantage on the other. -- Samuel Johnson
Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail. -- Samuel Johnson
To grieve for evils is often wrong; but it is much more wrong to grieve without them. All sorrow that lasts longer than its cause is morbid, and should be shaken off as an attack of melancholy, as the forerunner of a greater evil than poverty or pain. -- Samuel Johnson
I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to he right. -- Samuel Johnson
The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public. -- Samuel Johnson
Officious, innocent, sincere, Of every friendless name the friend. -- Samuel Johnson
It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm. -- Samuel Johnson
Most vices may be committed very genteelly: a man may debauch his friend's wife genteelly: he may cheat at cards genteelly -- Samuel Johnson
Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one. -- Samuel Johnson
None are happy but by anticipation of change. -- Samuel Johnson
As a man advances in life he gets what is better than admiration -judgement to estimate things at their own value. -- Samuel Johnson
There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow. -- Samuel Johnson
A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists without any practical regard to morals and religion; he may be learning not to live but to reason ... while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed. -- Samuel Johnson
PU'RIST: one superstitiously nice in the use of words. -- Samuel Johnson
Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind,
Obedient passions, and a will resigned -- Samuel Johnson
The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers. -- Samuel Johnson
The lust of gold succeeds the rage of conquest; The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless! The last corruption of degenerate man. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
He who praises everybody, praises nobody. -- Samuel Johnson
To be flattered is grateful, even when we know that our praises are not believed by those who pronounce them; for they prove, at least, our power, and show that our favour is valued, since it is purchased by the meanness of falsehood. -- Samuel Johnson
His death eclipsed the gayety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure. -- Samuel Johnson
The mental disease of the present generation is impatience of study, contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, and a disposition to rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity. -- Samuel Johnson
The public pleasures of far the greater part of mankind are counterfeit. -- Samuel Johnson
Man's chief merit consists in resisting the impulses of his nature. -- Samuel Johnson
May, notwithstanding, be questioned whether, except his bible, he ever read a book entirely through. Late in life, if any man praised a book in his presence, he was sure to ask, "Did you read it through?" If the answer was in the affirmative, he did not seem willing to believe it. -- Samuel Johnson
I soon found that wit, like every other power, has its boundaries; that its success depends upon the aptitude of others to receive impressions; and that as some bodies, indissoluble by heat, can set the furnace and crucible at defiance, there are min -- Samuel Johnson
Study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves -- Samuel Johnson
Instead of rating the man by his performances, we rate too frequently the performances by the man. -- Samuel Johnson
When the original is well chosen and judiciously copied, the imitator often arrives at excellence which he could never have attained without direction; for few are formed with abilities to discover new possibilities of excellence, and to distinguish themselves by means never tried before. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them. -- Samuel Johnson
A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair. -- Samuel Johnson
Let me rejoice in the light which Thou hast imparted; let me serve Thee with active zeal, humbled confidence, and wait with patient expectation for the time in which the soul which Thou receivest shall be satisfied with knowledge. -- Samuel Johnson
So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something. -- Samuel Johnson
Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God. -- Samuel Johnson
All industry must be excited by hope. -- Samuel Johnson
I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise. -- Samuel Johnson
Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise. -- Samuel Johnson
A good wife is like the ivy which beautifies the building to which it clings, twining its tendrils more lovingly as time converts the ancient edifice into a ruin. -- Samuel Johnson
A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity; nor is that curiosity ever more agreeably or usefully employed, than in examining the laws and customs of foreign nations. -- Samuel Johnson
I am sorry I have not learnt to play at cards. It is very useful in life: it generates kindness, and consolidates society. -- Samuel Johnson
ADVENTITIOUS (ADVENTI'TIOUS) adj.[adventitius, Lat.]That which advenes; accidental; supervenient; extrinsically added, not essentially inherent. -- Samuel Johnson
A country gentleman should bring his lady to visit London as soon as he can, that they may have agreeable topicks for conversation when they are by themselves. -- Samuel Johnson
It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends. -- Samuel Johnson
Mutual complacency is the atmosphere of conjugal love. -- Samuel Johnson
Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs. -- Samuel Johnson
The great effect of friendship is beneficence, yet by the first act of uncommon kindness it is endangered. -- Samuel Johnson
Ignorance is mere privation by which nothing can be produced: it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction: and, without knowing why, we always rejoice when we learn, and grieve when we forget. -- Samuel Johnson
If in an actor there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid languor, a torpid apathy, the greatest kindness that can be shown him is a speedy sentence of expulsion. -- Samuel Johnson
It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age. -- Samuel Johnson
Sir, it is wrong to stir up law-suits; but when once it is certain that a law-suit is to go on, there is nothing wrong in a lawyer's endeavouring that he shall have the benefit, rather than another. -- Samuel Johnson
There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity. -- Samuel Johnson
He that travels in theory has no inconveniences. -- Samuel Johnson
You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not - silence is the sharper sword. -- Samuel Johnson
When speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
ACCEPTILATION (ACCEPTILA'TION) n.s.[acceptilatio, Lat.]A term of the civil law,importing the remission of a debt by an acquittance from the creditor, testifying the receipt of money which has never been paid. -- Samuel Johnson
Dishonor waits on perfidy. A man should blush to think a falsehood; it is the crime of cowards. -- Samuel Johnson
Slavery is now nowhere more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty. -- Samuel Johnson
Surely, it is much easier to respect a man who has always had respect, than to respect a man who we know was last year no better than ourselves, and will be no better next year. -- Samuel Johnson
The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout. -- Samuel Johnson
The uniform necessities of human nature produce in a great measure uniformity of life, and for part of the day make one place like another; to dress and to undress, to eat and to sleep, are the same in London as in the country. -- Samuel Johnson
Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed. -- Samuel Johnson
Every cold empirick, when his heart is expanded by a successful experiment, swells into a theorist ... -- Samuel Johnson
Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.
(Essay on Tea, 1757.) -- Samuel Johnson
An old friend never can be found, and nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost. -- Samuel Johnson
But grant, the virtues of a temp'rate prime
Bless with an age exempt from scorn or crime;
An age that melts with unperceived decay,
And glides in modest Innocence away -- Samuel Johnson
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them. -- Samuel Johnson
Methinks, though a man had all science, and all principles, yet it might not be amiss to have some conscience.Tillots.Pref.5. Wrong; -- Samuel Johnson
Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich. -- Samuel Johnson
When there is no hope, there can be no endeavor. -- Samuel Johnson
In narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction and a wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly in many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few. -- Samuel Johnson
His comedy pleases by the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy for the greater part by incident and action. His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to be instinct. -- Samuel Johnson
The life of a conscientious clergyman is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls. -- Samuel Johnson
Unconstraint is the grace of conversation. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits; the other recreates and revives them. -- Samuel Johnson
Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it -- Samuel Johnson
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble. -- Samuel Johnson
It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence. -- Samuel Johnson
Words are daughters of earth but ideas are sons of heaven. -- Samuel Johnson
If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance. -- Samuel Johnson
Ladies, stock and tend your hive,
Trifle not at thirty-five;
For, howe'er we boast and strive,
Life declines from thirty-five;
He that ever hopes to thrive
Must begin by thirty-five. -- Samuel Johnson
Exactness is first obtained, and afterwards elegance. But diction, merely vocal, is always in its childhood. As no man leaves his eloquence behind him, the new generations have all to learn. There may possibly be books without a polished language, but there can be no polished language without books. -- Samuel Johnson
Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves. -- Samuel Johnson
The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape. -- Samuel Johnson
Unintelligible language is a lantern without a light. -- Samuel Johnson
When female minds are embittered by age or solitude, their malignity is generally exerted in a rigorous and spiteful superintendence of domestic trifles. -- Samuel Johnson
The botanist looks upon the astronomer as a being unworthy of his regard; and he that is glowing great and happy by electrifying a bottle wonders how the world can be engaged by trifling prattle about war and peace. -- Samuel Johnson
Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation. -- Samuel Johnson
It was his peculiar happiness that he scarcely ever found a stranger whom he did not leave a friend; but it must likewise be added, that he had not often a friend long without obliging him to become a stranger. -- Samuel Johnson
The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights. -- Samuel Johnson
London! the needy villain's general home, The common sewer of Paris and of Rome! With eager thirst, by folly or by fate, Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state. -- Samuel Johnson
No man is defeated without some resentment which will be continued with obstinacy while he believes himself in the right, and asserted with bitterness, if even to his own conscience he is detected in the wrong. -- Samuel Johnson
Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgment and friendship are like being enlivened. -- Samuel Johnson
He ended, and his words impression leftOf much amazement to th' infernal crew,Distracted and surpris'd with deep dismayAt these sad tidings.Milton'sParadise Regained,b. i.3. -- Samuel Johnson
Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings; let us be therefore cautious of how we strip her. -- Samuel Johnson
Sleep is a state in which a great part of every life is passed. No animal has yet been discovered, whose existence is not varied with intervals of insensibility; and some late philosophers have extended the empire of sleep over the vegetable world. -- Samuel Johnson
There are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by. -- Samuel Johnson
When first the college rolls receive his name,
The young enthusiast quilts his ease for fame;
Through all his veins the fever of renown
Burns from the strong contagion of the gown -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
That observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good. -- Samuel Johnson
The dependant who cultivates delicacy in himself very little consults his own tranquillity. -- Samuel Johnson
To ACCEND (ACCE'ND) v.a.[accendo, Lat.]To kindle, to set on fire; a word very rarely used. Our devotion, if sufficiently accended, would, as theirs, burn up innumerable books of this sort.Decay of Piety. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
He that resigns his peace to little casualties, and suffers the course of his life to be interrupted for fortuitous inadvertencies or offences, delivers up himself to the direction of the wind, and loses all that constancy and equanimity which constitutes the chief praise of a wise man. -- Samuel Johnson
You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle. -- Samuel Johnson
As long as one lives he will have need of repentance. -- Samuel Johnson
In matters of business, no woman stops at integrity. -- Samuel Johnson
All envy is proportionate to desire; we are uneasy at the attainments of another, according as we think our own happiness would be advanced by the addition of that which he withholds from us. -- Samuel Johnson
Some species there be of middle natures, that is, of bird and beast, as batts; yet are their parts so set together, that we cannot define the beginning or end of either, there being a commixtion of both, rather than adaptation or cement of the one unto the other.Brown'sVulgar Errours,b. iii. c. ii. -- Samuel Johnson
He who fails to please in his salutation and address is at once rejected, and never obtains an opportunity of showing his latest excellences or essential qualities. -- Samuel Johnson
No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it ... There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government. -- Samuel Johnson
As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who consults his own dignity, to retract it as soon as he discovers it. -- Samuel Johnson
People may be taken in once, who imagine that an author is greater in private life than other men. -- Samuel Johnson
Enlarge my life with multitude of days, In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays; Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know, That life protracted is protracted woe. Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the passages of joy. -- Samuel Johnson
It is scarcely credible to what degree discernment may be dazzled by the mist of pride, and wisdom infatuated by the intoxication of flattery. -- Samuel Johnson
A vow is a snare for sin -- Samuel Johnson
Very few live by choice. Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not always willingly cooperate; and therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his own. -- Samuel Johnson
Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use. -- Samuel Johnson
The stream of Time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare. -- Samuel Johnson
The desires of man increase with his acquisitions. -- Samuel Johnson
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? -- Samuel Johnson
Man is a transitory being, and his designs must partake of the imperfections their author. -- Samuel Johnson
We have now learned that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking credit; let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily restrained from giving it. -- Samuel Johnson
Present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages. -- Samuel Johnson
God Himself, sir, does not propose to judge a man until his life is over. Why should you and I? -- Samuel Johnson
To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship. -- Samuel Johnson
It may be laid down as a position which seldom deceives, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong. -- Samuel Johnson
Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea. -- Samuel Johnson
Friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness and its permanence from the other. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
Terrestrial happiness is of short duration. The brightness of the flame is wasting its fuel; the fragrant flower is passing away in its own odors. -- Samuel Johnson
A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit. -- Samuel Johnson
You may translate books of science exactly ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written. -- Samuel Johnson
I do not much wish well to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will end in conquest and robbery. -- Samuel Johnson
This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to. -- Samuel Johnson
For patience, sov'reign o'er transmuted ill. -- Samuel Johnson
To be of no Church is dangerous. -- Samuel Johnson
What is said upon a subject is gathered from an hundred people. -- Samuel Johnson
They make a rout about universal liberty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty. -- Samuel Johnson
As every one is pleased with imagining that he knows something not yet commonly divulged, secret history easily gains credit; but it is for the most part believed only while it circulates in whispers, and when once it is openly told, is openly refuted. -- Samuel Johnson
The love of fame is a passion natural and universal, which no man, however high or mean, however wise or ignorant, was yet able to despise. -- Samuel Johnson
Every man may be observed to have a certain strain of lamentation, some peculiar theme of complaint on which he dwells in his moments of dejection. -- Samuel Johnson
Stand Firm for your country, and become a man Honour'd and lov'd: It were a noble life, To be found dead, embracing her. -- Samuel Johnson
I have all my life long been lying in bed till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good. -- Samuel Johnson
To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a delicious employment of the poets -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant. -- Samuel Johnson
Wise married women don't trouble themselves about infidelity in their husbands. -- Samuel Johnson
Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation. -- Samuel Johnson
Misfortunes should always be expected. -- Samuel Johnson
Such is the pleasure of projecting that many content themselves with a succession of visionary schemes, and wear out their allotted time in the calm amusement of contriving what they never attempt or hope to execute. -- Samuel Johnson
It is not easy to surround life with any circumstances in which youth will not be delightful. -- Samuel Johnson
The habit of looking on the bright side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year. -- Samuel Johnson
This is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery. -- Samuel Johnson
The care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature. -- Samuel Johnson
The morality of an action depends on the motive from which we act. If I fling half a crown to a beggar with intention to break his head and he picks it up and buy victuals with it, the physical effect is good. But with respect to me the action is very wrong. -- Samuel Johnson
Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea? -- Samuel Johnson
The true effect of genuine politeness seems to be rather ease than pleasure. -- Samuel Johnson
Hell is paved with good intentions. -- Samuel Johnson
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression. -- Samuel Johnson
Reason elevates our thoughts as high as the stars, and leads us through the vast space of this mighty fabric; yet it comes far short of the real extent of our corporeal being. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
Prosperity's right hand is industry and her left hand is frugality. -- Samuel Johnson
In a man's letters his soul lies naked. -- Samuel Johnson
Those whose abilities or knowledge incline them most to deviate from the general round of life are recalled from eccentricity by the laws of their existence. -- Samuel Johnson
Laws teach us to know when we commit injury and when we suffer it. -- Samuel Johnson
A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain. -- Samuel Johnson
Political liberty is only good insofar as it produces private liberty. -- Samuel Johnson
Liberty is the parent of truth, but truth and decency are sometimes at variance. All men and all propositions are to be treated here as they deserve, and there are many who have no claim either to respect or decency. -- Samuel Johnson
Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor. -- Samuel Johnson
No man can have much kindness for him by whom he does not believe himself esteemed, and nothing so evidently proves esteem as imitation. -- Samuel Johnson
It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession. -- Samuel Johnson
You never find people laboring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful income. -- Samuel Johnson
A man who always talks for fame never can be pleasing. The man who talks to unburthen his mind is the man to delight you. -- Samuel Johnson
Never speak of a man in his own presence. It is always indelicate, and may be offensive . -- Samuel Johnson
Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle. -- Samuel Johnson
Levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves. -- Samuel Johnson
These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes. -- Samuel Johnson
Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both. -- Samuel Johnson
There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance. -- Samuel Johnson
Condemned to Hope's delusive mine,
As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blasts or slow decline
Our social comforts drop away. -- Samuel Johnson
[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. -- Samuel Johnson
Greece appears to be the fountain of knowledge; Rome of elegance -- Samuel Johnson
We are told, that the black bear is innocent; but I should not like to trust myself with him. -- Samuel Johnson
The actuality of these spiritual qualities is thus imprisoned, though their potentiality be not quite destroyed; and thus a crass, extended, impenetrable, passive, divisible, unintelligent substance is generated, which we call matter.Cheyn.Phil. Prin. -- Samuel Johnson
I advised Chambers, and would advise every young man beginning to compose, to do it as fast as he can, to get a habit of having his mind to start promptly; it is so much more difficult to improve in speed than in accuracy. -- Samuel Johnson
We ought not to raise expectations which it is not in our power to satisfy.-It is more pleasing to see smoke brightening into flame, than flame sinking into smoke. -- Samuel Johnson
Try and forget our cares and sickness, and contribute, as we can to the happiness of each other. -- Samuel Johnson
Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean advantages. -- Samuel Johnson
Falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and once uttered are sullenly supported. -- Samuel Johnson
ADVERSARIA (ADVERSA'RIA) n.s.[Lat. A book, as it should seem, in which Debtor and Creditor were set in opposition.]A common-place; a book to note in. These parchments are supposed to have been St. Paul's adversaria.Bull'sSermons. -- Samuel Johnson
Most men think indistinctly, and therefore cannot speak with exactness ... -- Samuel Johnson
We often need reminding even if we do not often need educating. -- Samuel Johnson
At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest. -- Samuel Johnson
Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed. -- Samuel Johnson
A Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist who does not love Scotland better than truth. -- Samuel Johnson
Never believe extraordinary characters which you hear of people. Depend upon it, they are exaggerated. You do not see one man shoot a great deal higher than another. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations. -- Samuel Johnson
No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring. -- Samuel Johnson
Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of the spring: no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of the Nile. -- Samuel Johnson
The limbs will quiver and move after the soul is gone. -- Samuel Johnson
Attainment is followed by neglect, possession by disgust, and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to many another course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last -- Samuel Johnson
All to whom want is terrible, upon whatever principle, ought to think themselves obliged to learn the sage maxims of our parsimonious ancestors, and attain the salutary arts of contracting expense; for without economy none can be rich, and with it few can be poor. -- Samuel Johnson
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. -- Samuel Johnson
To me - the choice of life is become less important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice of eternity. -- Samuel Johnson
Fears of the brave and follies of the wise. -- Samuel Johnson
Those who will not take the trouble to think for themselves, have always somebody that thinks for them; and the difficulty in writing is to please those from whom others learn to be pleased. -- Samuel Johnson
A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity. -- Samuel Johnson
It is much easier not to write like a man than to write like a woman. -- Samuel Johnson
No one will persist long in helping someone who will not help themselves. -- Samuel Johnson
In youth, it is common to measure right and wrong by the opinion of the world, and in age, to act without any measure but interest, and to lose shame without substituting virtue. -- Samuel Johnson
An author places himself uncalled before the tribunal of criticism and solicits fame at the hazard of disgrace. -- Samuel Johnson
Deviation from Nature is deviation from happiness. -- Samuel Johnson
Nothing is more common than mutual dislike, where mutual approbation is particularly expected. -- Samuel Johnson
Discord generally operates in little things; it is inflamed ... by contrariety of taste oftener than principles. -- Samuel Johnson
An Englishman is content to say nothing when he has nothing to say. -- Samuel Johnson
Of many, imagined blessings it may be doubted whether he that wants or possesses them had more reason to be satisfied with his lot. -- Samuel Johnson
Pope had been flattered till he thought himself one of the moving powers of the system of life. When he talked of laying down his pen, those who sat round him intreated and implored; and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they went away and laughed. -- Samuel Johnson
He who aspires to be a serious wine drinker must drink claret. -- Samuel Johnson
Men, however distinguished by external accidents or intrinsick qualities, have all the same wants, the same pains, and, as far as the senses are consulted, the same pleasures. -- Samuel Johnson
which has the power or quality of adding. The additory fiction gives to a great man a larger share of reputation than belongs to him, to enable him to serve some good end or purpose.Arbuthnot'sArt of political Lying. -- Samuel Johnson
Life protracted is protracted woe. -- Samuel Johnson
There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow. -- Samuel Johnson
To forget, or pretend to do so, to return a borrowed article, is the meanest sort of petty theft. -- Samuel Johnson
He was so generally civil, that nobody thanked him for it. -- Samuel Johnson
Let observation with extensive view, Survey mankind from China to Peru; Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife, And watch the busy scenes of crowded life. -- Samuel Johnson
The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players. -- Samuel Johnson
Long customs are not easily broken; he that attempts to change the course of his own life very often labors in vain; and how shall we do that for others, which we are seldom able to do for ourselves. -- Samuel Johnson
Nothing [ ... ] will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome. -- Samuel Johnson
New arts are long in the world before poets describe them; for they borrow everything from their predecessors, and commonly derive very little from nature or from life. -- Samuel Johnson
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language. -- Samuel Johnson
There is in this world no real delight (excepting those of sensuality), but exchange of ideas in conversation. -- Samuel Johnson
Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life; and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre -- Samuel Johnson
Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance. -- Samuel Johnson
Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. -- Samuel Johnson
Those who are in the power of evil habits must conquer them as they can; and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be attained: but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by timely caution, preserve their freedom; -- Samuel Johnson
He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade. -- Samuel Johnson
Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel. -- Samuel Johnson
Many falsehoods are passing into uncontradicted history. -- Samuel Johnson
I remember very well, when I was at Oxford, an old gentleman said to me, Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowledge; for when years come upon you, you will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome task. -- Samuel Johnson
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? -- Samuel Johnson
I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom. -- Samuel Johnson
See nations slowly wise, and meanly just, to buried merit raise the tardy bust. -- Samuel Johnson
Some claim a place in the list of patriots, by an acrimonious and unremitting opposition to the court. This mark is by no means infallible. Patriotism is not necessarily included in rebellion. A man may hate his king, yet not love his country. -- Samuel Johnson
Hunger is never delicate. -- Samuel Johnson
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified. -- Samuel Johnson
Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine that he possesses some qualities superior, either in kind or degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world. -- Samuel Johnson
Some people wave their dogmatic thinking until their own reason is entangled. -- Samuel Johnson
And buxom, which means only obedient, is now made, in familiar phrases, to stand for wanton; because in an ancient form of marriage, before the Reformation, the bride promised complaisance and obedience, in these terms: "I will be bonair and buxom in bed and at board. -- Samuel Johnson
If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur. -- Samuel Johnson
Wit is that which has been often thought, but never before was well expressed. -- Samuel Johnson
He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into the short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind. -- Samuel Johnson
AMPHISBAeNA (AMPHISBAe'NA) n.s.[Lat. serpent supposed to have two heads. That the amphisbaena, that is, a smaller kind of serpent, which moveth forward and backward, hath two heads, or one at either extreme, was affirmed by Nicander, and others.Brown'sVulgar Errours,b. iii. -- Samuel Johnson
To ADMOVE (ADMO'VE) v.a.[admoveo, Lat.]To bring one thing to another. If, unto the powder of loadstone or iron, we admove the northpole of the loadstone, the powders, or small divisions, will erect and conform themselves thereto.Brown'sVulgar Errours,b. ii. -- Samuel Johnson
We all live in the hope of pleasing somebody; and the pleasure of pleasing ought to be greatest, and always will be greatest, when our endeavors are exerted in consequence of our duty. -- Samuel Johnson