Samuel Johnson - The works of Samuel Johnson (1710)

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Cautious age suspects the flattering form, and only credits what experience tells.

Samuel Johnson
Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings because they are his own.

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
All truth is valuable, and satirical criticism may be considered as useful when it rectifies error and improves judgment; he that refines the public taste is a public benefactor.

Samuel Johnson
He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed. The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich.

Samuel Johnson
To paint things as they are requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy.

Samuel Johnson
There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance.

Samuel Johnson
All to whom want is terrible, upon whatever principle, ought to think themselves obliged to learn the sage maxims of our parsimonious ancestors, and attain the salutary arts of contracting expense; for without economy none can be rich, and with it few can be poor.

Samuel Johnson
It is, however, not necessary, that a man should forbear to write, till he has discovered some truth unknown before; he may be sufficiently useful, by only diversifying the surface of knowledge, and luring the mind by a new appearance to a second view of those beauties which it had passed over inattentively before.

Samuel Johnson
The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.

Samuel Johnson
A man estimable for his learning, amiable for his life, and venerable for his piety. Arbuthnot was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his profession, versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and able to animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active imagination; a scholar with great brilliance of wit; a wit who, in the crowd of life, retained and discovered a noble ardour of religious zeal.

Samuel Johnson
Wealth is nothing in itself; it is not useful but when it departs from us.

Samuel Johnson
To use two languages familiarly and without contaminating one by the other, is very difficult; and to use more than two is hardly to be hoped. The prizes which some have received for their multiplicity of languages may be sufficient to excite industry, but can hardly generate confidence.

Samuel Johnson
Criticism, though dignified from the earliest ages by the labours of men eminent for knowledge and sagacity, has not yet attained the certainty and stability of science.

Samuel Johnson
The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights.

Samuel Johnson
Friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness and its permanence from the other.

Samuel Johnson
A man finds in the productions of nature an inexhaustible stock of material on which he can employ himself, without any temptations to envy or malevolence, and has always a certain prospect of discovering new reasons for adoring the sovereign author of the universe.

Samuel Johnson
It will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.

Samuel Johnson
All envy is proportionate to desire; we are uneasy at the attainments of another, according as we think our own happiness would be advanced by the addition of that which he withholds from us.

Samuel Johnson
Catch then, O! catch the transient hour,
Improve each moment as it flies;
Life's a short Summer — man a flower,
He dies — alas! how soon he dies!

Samuel Johnson
Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.

Samuel Johnson
He that is warm for truth, and fearless in its defense, performs one of the duties of a good man; he strenghtens his own conviction, and guards others from delusion; but steadiness of belief, and boldness of profession, are yet only part of the form of godliness.

Samuel Johnson
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Samuel Johnson
We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.

Samuel Johnson
I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

Samuel Johnson
Men, however distinguished by external accidents or intrinsick qualities, have all the same wants, the same pains, and, as far as the senses are consulted, the same pleasures.

Samuel Johnson
In bed we laugh, in bed we cry, and born in bed, in bed we die; the near approach a bed may show of human bliss to human woe.

Samuel Johnson
Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions

Samuel Johnson
Falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and once uttered are sullenly supported.

Samuel Johnson
Justice is indispensably and universally necessary, and what is necessary must always be limited, uniform, and distinct

Samuel Johnson