Samuel Johnson Quotes

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Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

Samuel Johnson
He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Samuel Johnson
Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.

Samuel Johnson
The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence.

Samuel Johnson
The student who would build his knowledge on solid foundations, and proceed by just degrees to the pinnacles of truth, is directed by the great philosopher of France to begin by doubting of his own existence. In like manner, whoever would complete any arduous and intricate enterprise, should, as soon as his imagination can cool after the first blaze of hope, place before his own eyes every possible embarrassment that may retard or defeat him. He should first question the probability of success, and then endeavour to remove the objections that he has raised.

Samuel Johnson
Ah! let not Censure term our fate our choice,
The stage but echoes back the public's voice;
The drama's laws the drama's patrons give,
For we that live to please must please to live.

Samuel Johnson
The appearance and retirement of actors are the great events of the theatrical world; and their first performances fill the pit with conjecture and prognostication, as the first actions of a new monarch agitate nations with hope and fear.

Samuel Johnson
Every class of society has its cant of lamentation, which is understood or regarded by none but themselves; and every part of life has its uneasiness, which those who do not feel them will not commiserate. An event which spreads distraction over half the commercial world, assembles the trading companies in councils and committees, and shakes the nerves of a thousand stockjobbers, is read by the landlord and the farmer with frigid indifference.

Samuel Johnson
Norway, too, has noble wild prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, Sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!

Samuel Johnson
I am inclined to believe that few attacks either of ridicule or invective make much noise, but by the help of those they provoke.

Samuel Johnson
Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

Samuel Johnson
He hated a fool, and he hated a rogue, and he hated a whig; he was a very good hater.
Of Bathurst

Samuel Johnson
I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.

Samuel Johnson
The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.

Samuel Johnson
Human happiness has always its abatements; the brightest sunshine of success is not without a cloud.

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
"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.

Samuel Johnson
Boswell: I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it…
Johnson: That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.

Samuel Johnson
I have already enjoyed too much; give me something to desire.

Samuel Johnson
No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.

Samuel Johnson
No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred animadversion, than the negligence with which men overlook their own faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them, however frequently repeated.

Samuel Johnson
There is reason to suspect, that the distinctions of mankind have more show than value, when it is found that all agree to be weary alike of pleasures and of cares; that the powerful and the weak, the celebrated and obscure, join in one common wish, and implore from nature's hand the nectar of oblivion.

Samuel Johnson
A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see.

Samuel Johnson
I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.

Samuel Johnson
Example is always more efficacious than precept.

Samuel Johnson
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.

Samuel Johnson
I never take a nap after dinner but when I have had a bad night; and then the nap takes me.

Samuel Johnson
They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.
Of the Letters of Lord Chesterfield

Samuel Johnson
Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies.

Samuel Johnson
Claret is the liquor for boys; port, for men; but he who aspires to be a hero (smiling) must drink brandy.

Samuel Johnson