Samuel Johnson Quotes

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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.

Samuel Johnson
Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

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

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
GRUBSTREET — The name of a street near Moorsfield, London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems.

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.

Samuel Johnson
CLUB — An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions.

Samuel Johnson
There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business.

Samuel Johnson
Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young.

Samuel Johnson
Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind but in one composition…That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature.

Samuel Johnson
If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still

Samuel Johnson
Happiness," said he, "must be something solid and permanent, without fear and without uncertainty.

Samuel Johnson
But, scarce observ'd, the knowing and the bold
Fall in the gen'ral massacre of gold.

Samuel Johnson
It is our first duty to serve society, and, after we have done that, we may attend wholly to the salvation of our own souls. A youthful passion for abstracted devotion should not be encouraged.

Samuel Johnson
A man who is good enough to go to heaven is not good enough to be a clergyman.

Samuel Johnson
The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket.

Samuel Johnson
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

Samuel Johnson
Not impressed with the performance of a virtuoso violinist:
Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible.

Samuel Johnson
Parents and children seldom act in concert:
each child endeavors to appropriate
the esteem or fondness of the parents,
and the parents, with yet less temptation,
betray each other to their children.

Samuel Johnson
The world is not yet exhausted: let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.

Samuel Johnson
That there is something in advice very useful and salutary, seems to be equally confessed on all hands; since even those that reject it, allow for the most part that rejection to be wrong, but charge the fault upon the unskilful manner in which it is given; they admit the efficacy of the medicine, but abhor the nauseousness of the vehicle.

Samuel Johnson
The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life.

Samuel Johnson
The true Genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.

Samuel Johnson
He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor.

Samuel Johnson
Players, Sir! I look upon them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint-stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

Samuel Johnson
A cow is a very good animal in the field; but we turn her out of a garden.

Samuel Johnson
On choosing between two little known poets:
Sir, there is no settling the point of precedence between a louse and a flea.

Samuel Johnson
An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay,
And glides in modest innocence away.

Samuel Johnson
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage.

Samuel Johnson
All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

Samuel Johnson