Samuel Johnson - Mind Quotes

99 Sourced Quotes

View all Samuel Johnson Quotes
It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.

Samuel Johnson
If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur.

Samuel Johnson
The Churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.

Samuel Johnson
Among the anfractuosities of the human mind, I know not if it may not be one, that there is a superstitious reluctance to sit for a picture.

Samuel Johnson
The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is to attempt but little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made by short flights frequently repeated; the most lofty fabrics of science are formed by the continued accumulation of single propositions.

Samuel Johnson
When the eye or the imagination is struck with an uncommon work, the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was performed

Samuel Johnson
Most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them.

Samuel Johnson
Babies do not want to hear about babies; they like to be told of giants and castles, and of somewhat which can stretch and stimulate their little minds.

Samuel Johnson
With these [Love, Patience, Faith] celestial Wisdom calms the mind, And makes the happiness she does not find.

Samuel Johnson
Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any high degree; only about as much as is used in the lower kinds of poetry.

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
It is wonderful, when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

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
Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge, and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things, when they are shown their form or told their use.

Samuel Johnson
There are occasions on which it is noble to dare to stand alone. To be pious among infidels, to be disinterested in a time of general venality, to lead a life of virtue and reason in the midst of sensualists, is a proof of a mind intent on nobler things than the praise or blame of men, of a soul fixed in the contemplation of the highest good, and superiour to the tyranny of custom and example.

Samuel Johnson
Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.

Samuel Johnson
There are minds so impatient of inferiority, that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

Samuel Johnson
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.

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
A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity.

Samuel Johnson
To expect that the intricacies of science will be pierced by a careless glance, or the eminences of fame ascended without labour, is to expect a peculiar privilege, a power denied to the rest of mankind; but to suppose that the maze is inscrutable to diligence, or the heights inaccessible to perseverance, is to submit tamely to the tyranny of fancy, and enchain the mind in voluntary shackles.

Samuel Johnson
Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such,
We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much;
Who, born for the Universe, narrowed his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.

Samuel Johnson
What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.

Samuel Johnson
The prosperity of a people is proportionate to the number of hands and minds usefully employed. To the community, sedition is a fever, corruption is a gangrene, and idleness is an atrophy. Whatever body or society wastes more than it acquires, must gradually decay, and every being that continues to be fed, and eases to labor, takes away something from the public stock.

Samuel Johnson
No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.

Samuel Johnson
ESSAY — A loose sally of the mind; an irregular indigested piece; not a regular and orderly composition.

Samuel Johnson
If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.

Samuel Johnson
Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired.... Do not suffer life to stagnate; it will grow muddy for want of motion: commit yourself again to the current of the world.

Samuel Johnson
I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else.

Samuel Johnson
A fellow that makes no figure in company, and has a mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar-cruet.

Samuel Johnson