Samuel Johnson Quotes

1,224 Sourced Quotes

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Samuel Johnson
Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

Samuel Johnson
No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.

Samuel Johnson
The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

Samuel Johnson
Were it not for imagination, Sir, a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a Duchess.

Samuel Johnson
If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

Samuel Johnson
Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.

Samuel Johnson
A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

Samuel Johnson
There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.

Samuel Johnson
To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.

Samuel Johnson
Sleep is a state in which a great part of every life is passed. No animal has yet been discovered, whose existence is not varied with intervals of insensibility; and some late philosophers have extended the empire of sleep over the vegetable world.

Samuel Johnson
Reflect that life, like every other blessing,
Derives its value from its use alone.

Samuel Johnson
Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

Samuel Johnson
A thousand horrid Prodigies foretold it.
A feeble government, eluded Laws,
A factious Populace, luxurious Nobles,
And all the maladies of stinking states.

Samuel Johnson
Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

Samuel Johnson
Scarcely any degree of judgment is sufficient to restrain the imagination from magnifying that on which it is long detained

Samuel Johnson
Goldsmith, however, was a man who whatever he wrote, did it better than any other man could do.

Samuel Johnson
Hunting was the labour of the savages of North America, but the amusement of the gentlemen of England.

Samuel Johnson
The Church does not superstitiously observe days, merely as days, but as memorials of important facts. Christmas might be kept as well upon one day of the year as another; but there should be a stated day for commemorating the birth of our Saviour, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected.

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

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

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

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

Samuel Johnson
Grubstreet—The name of a street near Moors-field, London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems.

Samuel Johnson
Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.

Samuel Johnson
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