Samuel Johnson Quotes

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Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears.

Samuel Johnson
What I gained by being in France was learning to be better satisfied with my own country.

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
Persius has justly observed, that knowledge is nothing to him who is not known by others to possess it: to the scholar himself it is nothing with respect either to honour or advantage, for the world cannot reward those qualities which are concealed from it; with respect to others it is nothing, because it affords no help to ignorance or errour.

Samuel Johnson
Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated; and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavors, by showing what has already been performed.

Samuel Johnson
I wish you would add an index rerum, that when the reader recollects any incident he may easily find it.

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

Samuel Johnson
The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing.

Samuel Johnson
The parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we readily conform our minds are, above all other writings, to be found in the lives of particular persons, and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography.

Samuel Johnson
Pointed axioms and acute replies fly loose about the world, and are assigned successively to those whom it may be the fashion to celebrate.

Samuel Johnson
The roads of science are narrow, so that they who travel them, must wither follow or meet one another...

Samuel Johnson
Sir, to leave things out of a book merely because people tell you they will not be believed, is meanness.

Samuel Johnson
Among the numerous requisites that must concur to complete an author, few are of more importance than an early entrance into the living world. The seed of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in public. Argumentation may be taught in colleges, and theories formed in retirement; but the artifice of embellishment and the powers of attraction can be gained only by a general converse.

Samuel Johnson
Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he must study at Christ Church and All Souls.

Samuel Johnson
Words become low by the occasions to which they are applied, or the general character of them who use them; and the disgust which they produce arises from the revival of those images with which they are commonly united.

Samuel Johnson
An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature.

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

Samuel Johnson
Many of our miseries are merely comparative: we are often made unhappy, not by the presence of any real evil, but by the absence of some fictitious good; of something which is not required by any real want of nature, which has not in itself any power of gratification, and which neither reason nor fancy would have prompted us to wish, did we not see it in the possession of others.

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
Discord generally operates in little things; it is inflamed... by contrariety of taste oftener than principles.

Samuel Johnson
If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in the pursuit of truth; if he writes not to make others learned, but to boast the learning which he possesses himself, and wishes to be admired rather than understood, he counteracts the first end of writing, and justly suffers the utmost severity of censure, or the more afflicting severity of neglect.

Samuel Johnson
In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man; they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry.

Samuel Johnson
Man's chief merit consists in resisting the impulses of his nature.

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
Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

Samuel Johnson
Riches, perhaps, do not so often produce crimes as incite accusers.

Samuel Johnson
Of Oliver Goldsmith:
No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had.

Samuel Johnson
You are the most unscottified of your countrymen.

Samuel Johnson