Samuel Johnson Quotes

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Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper.

Samuel Johnson
A writer who obtains his full purpose loses himself in his own lustre.

Samuel Johnson
To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.

Samuel Johnson
If we require more perfection from women than from ourselves, it is doing them honor.

Samuel Johnson
It may be no less dangerous to claim, on certain occasions, too little than too much. There is something captivating in spirit and intrepidity, to which we often yield as to a resistless power; nor can we often yield as to a resistless power; nor can he reasonably expect the confidence of others who too apparently distrusts himself.

Samuel Johnson
He that wishes to see his country robbed of its rights cannot be a patriot.

Samuel Johnson
A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries.

Samuel Johnson
We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable.

Samuel Johnson
Timidity is a disease of the mind, obstinate and fatal; for a man once persuaded that any impediment is insuperable has given it, with respect to himself, that strength and weight which it had not before.

Samuel Johnson
As the mind must govern the hands, so in every society the man of intelligence must direct the man of labor.

Samuel Johnson
It is much easier not to write like a man than to write like a woman.

Samuel Johnson
It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the eye fixed on something remote.

Samuel Johnson
Whoever rises above those who once pleased themselves with equality, will have many malevolent gazers at his eminence.

Samuel Johnson
Sir, sorrow is inherent in humanity. As you cannot judge two and two to be either five, or three, but certainly four, so, when comparing a worse present state with a better which is past, you cannot but feel sorrow. It is not cured by reason, but by the incursion of present objects, which bear out the past.

Samuel Johnson
It is not easy to surround life with any circumstances in which youth will not be delightful.

Samuel Johnson
They who have already enjoyed the crowds and noise of the great city, know their desire to return is little more than the restlessness of a vacant mind, that they are not so much led by hope as driven by disgust, and wish rather to leave the country than to see the town.

Samuel Johnson
Affectation naturally counterfeits those excellences which are placed at the greatest distance from possibility of attainment, because, knowing our own defects, we eagerly endeavor to supply them with artificial excellence.

Samuel Johnson
Advice, as it always gives a temporary appearance of superiority, can never be very grateful, even when it is most necessary or most judicious; but, for the same reason, every one is eager to instruct his neighbors.

Samuel Johnson
Every man's affairs, however little, are important to himself.

Samuel Johnson
Contempt is a kind of gangrene which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees.

Samuel Johnson
Liberty is the parent of truth, but truth and decency are sometimes at variance. All men and all propositions are to be treated here as they deserve, and there are many who have no claim either to respect or decency.

Samuel Johnson
From all our observations we may collect with certainty, that misery is the lot of man, but cannot discover in what particular condition it will find most alleviations.

Samuel Johnson
We seldom require more to the happiness of the present hour than to surpass him that stands next before us.

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

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

Samuel Johnson