Samuel Johnson - The works of Samuel Johnson (1710)

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It seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.

Samuel Johnson
It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful.

Samuel Johnson
The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.

Samuel Johnson
Condemned to Hope's delusive mine,
As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blasts or slow decline
Our social comforts drop away.

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 authour who imitates his predecessors only by furnishing himself with thoughts and elegances out of the same general magazine of literature, can with little more propriety be reproached as a plagiary, than the architect can be censured as a mean copier of Angelo or Wren, because he digs his marble out of the same quarry, squares his stones by the same art, and unites them in columns of the same orders.

Samuel Johnson
A translator is to be like his author; it is not his business to excel him.

Samuel Johnson
Philosophy has often attempted to repress insolence by asserting that all conditions are leveled by death; a position which, however it may defect the happy, will seldom afford much comfort to the wretched.

Samuel Johnson
Every man speaks and writes with intent to be understood; and it can seldom happen but he that understands himself might convey his notions to another, if, content to be understood, he did not seek to be admired.

Samuel Johnson
Nothing was ever said with uncommon felicity, but by the cooperation of chance; and therefore, wit, as well as valor must be content to share its honors with fortune.

Samuel Johnson
Genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies and animates.

Samuel Johnson
When first the college rolls receive his name,
The young enthusiast quilts his ease for fame;
Through all his veins the fever of renown
Burns from the strong contagion of the gown

Samuel Johnson
The mere power of saving what is already in our hands must be of easy acquisition to every mind; and as the example of Lord Bacon may show that the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a thousand instances every day prove that the humblest may practise it with success.

Samuel Johnson
Thought is always troublesome to him who lives without his own approbation.

Samuel Johnson
Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.

Samuel Johnson
Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured.

Samuel Johnson
Whoever commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him who he deceives, but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society.

Samuel Johnson
It is not the desire of new acquisitions, but the glory of conquests, that fires the soldier's breast; as indeed the town is seldom worth much, when it has suffered the devastations of a siege.

Samuel Johnson
Parents and children seldom act in concert:
each child endeavors to appropriate
the esteem or fondness of the parents,
and the parents, with yet less temptation,
betray each other to their children.

Samuel Johnson
The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside

Samuel Johnson
It was his peculiar happiness that he scarcely ever found a stranger whom he did not leave a friend; but it must likewise be added, that he had not often a friend long without obliging him to become a stranger.

Samuel Johnson
Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.

Samuel Johnson
Evil is uncertain in the same degree as good, and for the reason that we ought not to hope too securely, we ought not to fear with to much dejection.

Samuel Johnson
No cause more frequently produces bashfulness than too high an opinion of our own importance. He that imagines an assembly filled with his merit, panting with expectation, and hushed with attention, easily terrifies himself with the dread of disappointing them, and strains his imagination in pursuit of something that may vindicate the veracity of fame, and show that his reputation was not gained by chance.

Samuel Johnson