Samuel Johnson Quotes

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The whole world is put in motion by the wish for riches and the dread of poverty.

Samuel Johnson
He who sees different ways to the same end, will, unless he watches carefully over his own conduct, lay out too much of his attention upon the comparison of probabilities and the adjustment of expedients, and pause in the choice of his road, till some accident intercepts his journey.

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

Samuel Johnson
He who attempts to do all will waste his life in doing little.

Samuel Johnson
Every man, however hopeless his pretensions may appear, has some project by which he hopes to rise to reputation; some art by which he imagines that the attention of the world will be attracted; some quality, good or bad, which discriminates him from the common herd of mortals, and by which others may be persuaded to love, or compelled to fear him.

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
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
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
Come to me, my dear Bozzy, and let us be as happy as we can.

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
You are the most unscottified of your countrymen.

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
Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself

Samuel Johnson
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know, because they have never deceived us.

Samuel Johnson
He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.

Samuel Johnson
I consider this mighty structure as a monument of the insufficiency of human enjoyments.
Of the Pyramids

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

Samuel Johnson
When speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four.

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
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
A man might write such stuff for ever, if he would abandon his mind to it.

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
This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.

Samuel Johnson
It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Samuel Johnson