Samuel Johnson Quotes

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Fate wings, with every wish, the afflictive dart,
Each gift of nature, and each grace of art.

Samuel Johnson
As a man advances in life he gets what is better than admiration -judgement to estimate things at their own value.

Samuel Johnson
Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgment and friendship are like being enlivened.

Samuel Johnson
Though it is evident, that not more than one age or people can deserve the censure of being more averse from learning than any other, yet at all times knowledge must have encountered impediments, and wit been mortified with contempt, or harassed with persecution.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Samuel Johnson
Commerce can never be at a stop while one man wants what another can supply; and credit will never be denied, while it is likely to be repaid with profit.

Samuel Johnson
Every man has something to do which he neglects, every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat.

Samuel Johnson
Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.

Samuel Johnson
The lust of gold succeeds the rage of conquest; The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless! The last corruption of degenerate man.

Samuel Johnson
There is not, perhaps, to a mind well instructed, a more painful occurrence, than the death of one we have injured without reparation.

Samuel Johnson
To revenge reasonable incredulity by refusing evidence, is a degree of insolence with which the world is not yet acquainted; and stubborn audacity is the last refuge of guilt.

Samuel Johnson