Top 100 Quotes About Samuel Johnson
#1. By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen. I hope I see things from a greater distance.
Samuel Johnson
#4. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
#5. Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.
Samuel Johnson
#6. There ambush here relentless ruffians lay, And here the fell attorney prowls for prey.
Samuel Johnson
#8. He who makes a beast out of himself removes himself from the pain of being human
Samuel Johnson
#9. Exactness is first obtained, and afterwards elegance. But diction, merely vocal, is always in its childhood. As no man leaves his eloquence behind him, the new generations have all to learn. There may possibly be books without a polished language, but there can be no polished language without books.
Samuel Johnson
#10. 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
#11. Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words.
Samuel Johnson
#12. 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
#13. The heroes of literary history have been no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved.
Samuel Johnson
#14. Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect.
Samuel Johnson
#15. ABNODATION (ABNODA'TION) n.s.[abnodatio, Lat.] The act of cutting away knots from trees;a term of gardening.Dict.
Samuel Johnson
#16. The young man, who intends no ill,
Believes that none is intended, and therefore
Acts with openness and candor: but his father, having suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect, and too often allured to practice it.
Samuel Johnson
#17. "I fly from pleasure," said the prince, "because pleasure has ceased to please; I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others."
Samuel Johnson
#18. The true effect of genuine politeness seems to be rather ease than pleasure.
Samuel Johnson
#19. ADJUTOR (ADJU'TOR) n.s.[adjutor, Lat.] A helper.Dict. ADJUTORY (ADJU'TORY) adj.[adjutorius, Lat.] That which helps.Dict.
Samuel Johnson
#20. Wheresoe'er I turn my view,
All is strange, yet nothing new:
Endless labor all along,
Endless labor to be wrong:
Phrase that Time has flung away;
Uncouth words in disarray,
Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet,
Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.
Samuel Johnson
#21. The limbs will quiver and move after the soul is gone.
Samuel Johnson
#23. A man guilty of poverty easily believes himself suspected.
Samuel Johnson
#24. Wealth is nothing in itself; it is not useful but when it departs from us.
Samuel Johnson
#25. The most useful truths are always universal, and unconnected with accidents and customs.
Samuel Johnson
#26. Though the discoveries or acquisitions of man are not always adequate to the expectations of his pride, they are at least sufficient to animate his industry.
Samuel Johnson
#27. When female minds are embittered by age or solitude, their malignity is generally exerted in a rigorous and spiteful superintendence of domestic trifles.
Samuel Johnson
#28. I was not born for courts or great affairs;I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers.Pope.
Samuel Johnson
#29. People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.
Samuel Johnson
#31. 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
#32. Hope is an amusement rather than a good, and adapted to none but very tranquil minds.
Samuel Johnson
#33. There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.
Samuel Johnson
#34. I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
Samuel Johnson
#35. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain.
Samuel Johnson
#37. He bemoans our miseries with the tender pity of a Cowper, who, in warning us of life's grovelling pursuits and empty joys, seeks, by withdrawing us from their delusive dominion, to prepare us for "another and a better world." No.
Samuel Johnson
#38. The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence.
Samuel Johnson
#39. There is nothing by which a man exasperates most people more, than displaying a superior ability of briliancy in conversation. They seem pleased at the time; but their envy makes them curse him at their hearts.
Samuel Johnson
#40. I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.
Samuel Johnson
#41. The botanist looks upon the astronomer as a being unworthy of his regard; and he that is glowing great and happy by electrifying a bottle wonders how the world can be engaged by trifling prattle about war and peace.
Samuel Johnson
#42. Examine this statement: 'A woman cannot be a poet.' Dr Samuel Johnson (Englishman 1709-84 Occupation: Language Fixer and Big Mouth.) What then shall I give up? My poetry or my womanhood?
Jeanette Winterson
#43. He said that few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forgo the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive how to fill the interval between dinner and supper.
Samuel Johnson
#44. Of those that spin out trifles and die without a memorial, many flatter themselves with high opinions of their own importance, and imagine that they are every day adding some improvement to human life.
Samuel Johnson
#45. There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn. - SAMUEL JOHNSON
Kingsley Amis
#46. Rags will always make their appearance where they have a right to do it.
Samuel Johnson
#47. PU'RIST: one superstitiously nice in the use of words.
Samuel Johnson
#48. There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance.
Samuel Johnson
#49. He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.
Samuel Johnson
#50. The luster of diamonds is invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a picture are created by the shades; the highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue.
Samuel Johnson
#51. Life of Ages, richly poured,
Love of God unspent and free,
Flowing in the Prophet's word
And the People's liberty!
Never was to chosen race
That unstinted tide confined;
Thine is every time and place,
Fountain sweet of heart and mind!
Samuel Johnson
#52. In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man; they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry.
Samuel Johnson
#53. Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss.
Samuel Johnson
#54. Our triumphant age of plenty is riddled with darker feelings of doubt, cynicism, distrust, boredom and a strange kind of emptiness
Samuel Johnson
#55. I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to he right.
Samuel Johnson
#56. Men are like stone jugs - you may lug them where you like by the ears.
Samuel Johnson
#57. A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.
Samuel Johnson
#58. Frequent discontent must proceed from frequent hardships.
Samuel Johnson
#59. I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.
Samuel Johnson
#60. Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle; for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence.
Samuel Johnson
#62. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great.
Samuel Johnson
#63. The king who makes war on his enemies tenderly distresses his subjects most cruelly.
Samuel Johnson
#66. Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.
Samuel Johnson
#67. But the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favour, and reason by degrees submits to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness.
Samuel Johnson
#68. Slavery is now nowhere more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.
Samuel Johnson
#69. Assertion is not argument; to contradict the statement of an opponent is not proof that you are correct.
Samuel Johnson
#71. When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.
Samuel Johnson
#72. ADIAPHORY (ADIA'PHORY) n.s.[Gr.]Neutrality; indifference.
Samuel Johnson
#73. Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings because they are his own.
Samuel Johnson
#74. Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage,
Till pitying Nature signs the last release,
And bids afflicted worth retire to peace.
Samuel Johnson
#75. Be not too hasty," said Imlac, "to trust or to admire the teachers of morality: they discourse like angels, but they live like men.
Samuel Johnson
#76. Laws teach us to know when we commit injury and when we suffer it.
Samuel Johnson
#77. Many leave the labours of half their life to their executors and to chance, because they will not send them abroad unfinished, and are unable to finish them, having prescribed to themselves such a degree of exactness as human diligence can scarcely ontain.
Samuel Johnson
#78. In civilized society external advantages make us more respected. A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one. You may analyze this and say, What is there in it? But that will avail you nothing, for it is a part of a general system.
Samuel Johnson
#79. There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.
Samuel Johnson
#80. Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly!
Samuel Johnson
#81. 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
#82. You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.
Samuel Johnson
#83. A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice.
Samuel Johnson
#84. A lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.
Samuel Johnson
#85. I wish you would add an index rerum, that when the reader recollects any incident he may easily find it.
Samuel Johnson
#86. Rash oaths, whether kept or broken, frequently produce guilt.
Samuel Johnson
#87. It is unpleasing to represent our affairs to our own disadvantage; yet it is necessary to shew the evils which we desire to be removed.
Samuel Johnson
#88. Unintelligible language is a lantern without a light.
Samuel Johnson
#89. Though it is evident, that not more than one age or people can deserve the censure of being more averse from learning than any other, yet at all times knowledge must have encountered impediments, and wit been mortified with contempt, or harassed with persecution.
Samuel Johnson
#90. The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.
Samuel Johnson
#91. If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.
Samuel Johnson
#92. Year chases year, decay pursues decay,
Still drops some joy from with'ring life away;
New forms arise, and diff'rent views engage
Samuel Johnson
#93. Such is the constitution of man that labour may be styled its own reward; nor will any external incitements be requisite, if it be considered how much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body.
Samuel Johnson
#94. The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy.
Samuel Johnson
#95. Reason elevates our thoughts as high as the stars, and leads us through the vast space of this mighty fabric; yet it comes far short of the real extent of our corporeal being.
Samuel Johnson
#96. Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves.
Samuel Johnson
#97. I know not any crime so great that a man could contrive to commit as poisoning the sources of eternal truth.
Samuel Johnson
#98. Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson
#99. No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius.
Samuel Johnson
#100. Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest.
Samuel Johnson
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