Samuel Johnson: Trending quotes

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Samuel Johnson: 724 quotes26 likes

“It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.”

Samuel Johnson

Source: Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson (1786), p. 206

“English superiority and American obedience.”

Samuel Johnson

As quoted in The Life of Samuel Johnson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/1-55786-664-3 (1994), by Robert DeMaria, Jr., Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 252–256.

“Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.”

Samuel Johnson

September 20, 1773
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)

“Let observation with extensive view
Survey mankind, from China to Peru.”

Samuel Johnson

Source: Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), Line 1; comparable to: "All human race, from China to Peru, Pleasure, howe’er disguis’d by art, pursue", Thomas Warton, Universal Love of Pleasure

“The limbs will quiver and move after the soul is gone.”

Samuel Johnson

Northcote, 487
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Johnsoniana

“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

Winter, An Ode. The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1787), p. 355

“To a poet nothing can be useless.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 10

“The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.”

Samuel Johnson

Source: Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson (1786), p. 111

“The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.”

Samuel Johnson

Life of Milton
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified, and new prejudices to be opposed.”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

No. 86 (12 January 1751)
The Rambler (1750–1752)

“There is a wicked inclination in most people to suppose an old man decayed in his intellects. If a young or middle-aged man, when leaving a company, does not remember where he laid his hat, it is nothing; but if the same inattention is discovered in an old man, people will shrug up their shoulders, and say, "His memory is going."”

Samuel Johnson

1783, p. 501
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

“It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.”

Samuel Johnson

The Adventurer, # 84 (August 25, 1753) http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12050 <br class="br">Variant: Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.

“The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.”

Samuel Johnson

“Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.”

Samuel Johnson

Vol. II, p. 406
Letters to and from Dr. Samuel Johnson

“Blown about with every wind of criticism.”

Samuel Johnson

1784
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

“The insolence of wealth will creep out.”

Samuel Johnson

April 18, 1778, p. 400
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

“A thousand horrid Prodigies foretold it.
A feeble government, eluded Laws,
A factious Populace, luxurious Nobles,
And all the maladies of stinking states.”