Top 100 Samuel Johnson Quotes

#1. The process is the reality.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #2764
#2. Our triumphant age of plenty is riddled with darker feelings of doubt, cynicism, distrust, boredom and a strange kind of emptiness

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #75649
#3. 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

Samuel Johnson Quotes #113625
#4. I wish you would add an index rerum, that when the reader recollects any incident he may easily find it.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #117832
#5. Rash oaths, whether kept or broken, frequently produce guilt.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #120846
#6. The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #122130
#7. I know not any crime so great that a man could contrive to commit as poisoning the sources of eternal truth.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #128053
#8. Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #130539
#9. Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #149853
#10. The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #176083
#11. It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #210440
#12. Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings; let us be therefore cautious of how we strip her.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #233894
#13. Books have always a secret influence on the understanding.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #248182
#14. The resolution of the combat is seldom equal to the vehemence of the charge.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #276870
#15. Labor, if it were not necessary for existence, would be indispensable for the happiness of man.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #285887
#16. Profuseness is a cruel and crafty demon, that gradually involves her followers in dependence and debt; that is, fetters them with irons that enter into their souls.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #323493
#17. Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #328238
#18. Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #346067
#19. ANIMOSITY (ANIMO'SITY) n.s.[animositas, Lat.]Vehemence of hatred; passionate malignity. It implies rather the disposition to break out into outrages, than the outrage itself. They were sure to bring passion,

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #348076
#20. As he that lives longest lives but a little while, every man may be certain that he has no time to waste. The duties of life are commensurate to its duration; and every day brings its task, which, if neglected, is doubled on the morrow.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #350901
#21. Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #455554
#22. No member of society has the right to teach any doctrine contrary to what society holds to be true.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #476049
#23. Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #481918
#24. The fortitude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by no temptation, can at best be considered but as gold not yet brought to the test, of which therefore the true value cannot be assigned.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #486444
#25. Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #508670
#26. Luncheon: as much food as one's hand can hold.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #520367
#27. Their origin is commonly unknown; for the practice often continues when the cause has ceased, and concerning superstitious ceremonies it is in vain to conjecture; for what reason did not dictate, reason cannot explain.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #571717
#28. In such a government as ours no man is appointed to an office because he is the fittest for it
nor hardly in any other government
because there are so many connections and dependencies to be studied.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #584644
#29. The hopes of zeal are not wholly groundless.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #623010
#30. Cunning differs from wisdom as twilight from open day.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #626126
#31. Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #658771
#32. They who have already enjoyed the crowds and noise of the great city, know their desire to return is little more than the restlessness of a vacant mind, that they are not so much led by hope as driven by disgust, and wish rather to leave the country than to see the town.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #662076
#33. To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a delicious employment of the poets

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #669729
#34. While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #686491
#35. Security will produce danger.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #688310
#36. Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may be properly charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #725551
#37. Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #737038
#38. A cow is a very good animal in the field; but we turn her out of a garden.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #755270
#39. As long as one lives he will have need of repentance.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #771923
#40. AGONISTES (AGONI'STES) n.s.[ Gr.]A prize-fighter; one that contends at any public solemnity for a prize. Milton has so stiled his tragedy, because Sampson was called out to divert the Philistines with feats of strength.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #803120
#41. Locke, whom there is no reason to suspect of being a favorer of idleness or libertinism, has advanced that whoever hopes to employ any part of his time with efficacy and vigor must allow some of it to pass with trifles.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #822667
#42. I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #850518
#43. Celestial wisdom calms the mind.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #853248
#44. Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #883569
#45. There are charms made only for distant admiration.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #886349
#46. Life admits not of delays; when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #931034
#47. The morality of an action depends on the motive from which we act. If I fling half a crown to a beggar with intention to break his head and he picks it up and buy victuals with it, the physical effect is good. But with respect to me the action is very wrong.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #967775
#48. Commerce can never be at a stop while one man wants what another can supply; and credit will never be denied, while it is likely to be repaid with profit.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #970002
#49. A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #977569
#50. For patience, sov'reign o'er transmuted ill.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #981396
#51. Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life; and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #982633
#52. Men hate more steadily than they love.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #985162
#53. A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #986718
#54. 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

Samuel Johnson Quotes #987135
#55. He that travels in theory has no inconveniences.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #992144
#56. The habit of looking on the bright side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1028531
#57. It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1061903
#58. The animadversions of critics are commonly such as may easily provoke the sedatest writer to some quickness of resentment and asperity of reply.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1064040
#59. It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1117192
#60. Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1129418
#61. Sir, they are a race of convicts and ought to be grateful for anything we allow them short of hanging.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1186193
#62. The majority of a society is the true definition of the public.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1199507
#63. Network: Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections [ ... ]
Reticulated: Made of network; formed with interstitial vacuities.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1203469
#64. Yet reason frowns in war's unequal game,
Where wasted nations raise a single name;
And mortgag'd states their grandsire's wreaths regret,
From age to age in everlasting debt;
Wreaths which at last the dear-bought right convey
To rust on medals, or on stones decay.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1226405
#65. To read, write, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1236191
#66. Such is the pleasure of projecting that many content themselves with a succession of visionary schemes, and wear out their allotted time in the calm amusement of contriving what they never attempt or hope to execute.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1266982
#67. 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

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1270094
#68. Those who are in the power of evil habits must conquer them as they can; and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be attained: but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by timely caution, preserve their freedom;

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1284665
#69. Once a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1285223
#70. ADULTERINE (ADU'LTERINE) n.s.[adulterine, Fr. adulterinus, Lat.]A child born of an adulteress:a term of canon law.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1301394
#71. 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

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1304312
#72. Do not discourage your children from hoarding, if they have a taste to it; whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least is not the slave of gross appetite; and shows besides a preference always to be esteemed, of the future to the present moment.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1305306
#73. You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1310172
#74. When speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1320382
#75. It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation from habit; he that has once studiously developed a style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1323631
#76. Almost all the moral good which is left among us is the apparent effect of physical evil.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1336290
#77. Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea?

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1364636
#78. What I gained by being in France was learning to be better satisfied with my own country.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1390942
#79. Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1405270
#80. The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by pain, or the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection of fallacies which do us no harm.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1478939
#81. If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1481675
#82. Get together a hundred or two men, however sensible they may be, and you are very likely to have a mob.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1492816
#83. A woman of fortune being used the handling of money, spends it judiciously; but a woman who gets the command of money for the first time upon her marriage, has such a gust in spending it, that she throws it away with great profusion.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1502831
#84. Every man has some favorite topic of conversation, on which, by a feigned seriousness of attention, he may be drawn to expatiate without end.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1521085
#85. My nights are flatulent and unquiet.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1540223
#86. When two Eglishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1555071
#87. While an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1563691
#88. 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

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1576502
#89. Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1582629
#90. It is indeed certain, that whoever attempts any common topick, will find unexpected coincidences of his thoughts with those of other writers; nor can the nicest judgment always distinguish accidental similitude from artful imitation.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1588492
#91. It is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1610259
#92. He that undervalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1641620
#93. The perfect day for quitting is not real. It will never come, so might as well start today

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1672292
#94. Methinks, though a man had all science, and all principles, yet it might not be amiss to have some conscience.Tillots.Pref.5. Wrong;

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1685899
#95. O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1697054
#96. There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1719474
#97. Conjecture as to things useful, is good; but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, is very idle.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1783504
#98. None can be pleased without praise, and few can be praised without falsehood.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1801867
#99. Don't tell me of deception; a lie is a lie, whether it be a lie to the eye or a lie to the ear.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1819782
#100. None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Quotes #1857162

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