Samuel Johnson Quotes

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Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favor. She imagines herself not only certain of accomplishing every adventure, but of obtaining those rewards which the accomplishment may deserve. She is not easily persuaded to believe that the force of merit can be resisted by obstinacy and avarice, or its luster darkened by envy and malignity.

Samuel Johnson
Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured.

Samuel Johnson
I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian ['Ossian'].

Samuel Johnson
To a people warlike and indigent, an incursion into a rich country is never hurtful.

Samuel Johnson
I would consent to have a limb amputated to recover my spirits

Samuel Johnson
To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

Samuel Johnson
Men have solicitude about fame; and the greater share they have of it, the more afraid they are of losing it.

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

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

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

Samuel Johnson
Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

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

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

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

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

Samuel Johnson
Much mischief is done in the world with very little interest or design.

Samuel Johnson
Thought is always troublesome to him who lives without his own approbation.

Samuel Johnson
Profuseness is a cruel and crafty demon, that gradually involves her followers in dependence and debt; that is, fetters them with irons that enter into their souls.

Samuel Johnson
No man likes to live under the eye of perpetual disapprobation.

Samuel Johnson