Samuel Johnson - Life Quotes

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So different are the colors of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past... that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.

Samuel Johnson
Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.

Samuel Johnson
If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.

Samuel Johnson
There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.

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

Samuel Johnson
I am sorry I have not learned to play at cards. It is very useful in life: it generates kindness and consolidates society.

Samuel Johnson
Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.

Samuel Johnson
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

Samuel Johnson
Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and... the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

Samuel Johnson
Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,
And pause a while from learning to be wise.
There mark what ills the scholar's life assail —
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.

Samuel Johnson
Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.

Samuel Johnson
There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

Samuel Johnson
Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, of sickness, or captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable; nor does it appear that the happiest lot of terrestrial existence can set us above the want of this general blessing; or that life, when the gifts of nature and of fortune are accumulated upon it, would not still be wretched, were it not elevated and delighted by the expectation of some new possession, of some enjoyment yet behind, by which the wish shall at last be satisfied, and the heart filled up to its utmost extent.

Samuel Johnson
He that would travel for the entertainment of others should remember that the great object of remark is human life.

Samuel Johnson
The arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration.

Samuel Johnson
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

Samuel Johnson
It is astonishing that any man can forbear enquiring seriously whether there is a God; whether God is just; whether this life is the only state of existence.

Samuel Johnson
I have, all my life long, been lying till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good.

Samuel Johnson
Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.

Samuel Johnson
The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.

Samuel Johnson
Whoever shall review his life, will find that the whole tenor of his conduct has been determined by some accident of no apparent moment.

Samuel Johnson
A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists without any practical regard to morals and religion; he may be learning not to live but to reason... while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed.

Samuel Johnson
Philosophers there are who try to make themselves believe that this life is happy; but they believe it only while they are saying it, and never yet produced conviction in a single mind.

Samuel Johnson
Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

Samuel Johnson
Those who have any intention of deviating from the beaten roads of life, and acquiring a reputation superior to names hourly swept away by time among the refuse of fame, should add to their reason and their spirit the power of persisting in their pur

Samuel Johnson
Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from time to come.

Samuel Johnson
Men go to sea, before they know the unhappiness of that way of life; and when they have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession; as indeed is generally the case with men, when they have once engaged in any particular way of life.

Samuel Johnson
It is thus that mutual cowardice keeps us in peace. Were one half of mankind brave and one half cowards, the brave would be always beating the cowards. Were all brave, they would lead a very uneasy life; all would be continually fighting: but being all cowards, we go on very well.

Samuel Johnson
Life is surely given us for higher purposes than to gather what our ancestors have wisely thrown away, and to learn what is of no value but because it has been forgotten.

Samuel Johnson
By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.

Samuel Johnson