Samuel Johnson Quotes

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A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see.

Samuel Johnson
There is reason to suspect, that the distinctions of mankind have more show than value, when it is found that all agree to be weary alike of pleasures and of cares; that the powerful and the weak, the celebrated and obscure, join in one common wish, and implore from nature's hand the nectar of oblivion.

Samuel Johnson
No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred animadversion, than the negligence with which men overlook their own faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them, however frequently repeated.

Samuel Johnson
No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.

Samuel Johnson
I have already enjoyed too much; give me something to desire.

Samuel Johnson
The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence.

Samuel Johnson
Sir, they are a race of convicts and ought to be grateful for anything we allow them short of hanging.

Samuel Johnson
To preserve health is a moral and religious duty, for health is the basis of all social virtues. We can no longer be useful when not well.

Samuel Johnson
An exotic and irrational entertainment, which has been always combated, and always has prevailed.
Of Italian Opera

Samuel Johnson
Lampoon. A personal satire; abuse; censure written not to reform but to vex.

Samuel Johnson
Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world.

Samuel Johnson
He that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past years must learn to know the present value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to the ground.

Samuel Johnson
I dogmatise and am contradicted, and in this conflict of opinions and sentiments I find delight.
On his conversation in taverns

Samuel Johnson
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

Samuel Johnson
A transition from an author's book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.

Samuel Johnson
We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Samuel Johnson
In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness,—inspissated gloom.

Samuel Johnson
Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

Samuel Johnson
He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Samuel Johnson
Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.

Samuel Johnson
Human happiness has always its abatements; the brightest sunshine of success is not without a cloud.

Samuel Johnson
He hated a fool, and he hated a rogue, and he hated a whig; he was a very good hater.
Of Bathurst

Samuel Johnson
I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.

Samuel Johnson
The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.

Samuel Johnson
Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

Samuel Johnson