Samuel Johnson: Trending quotes

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Samuel Johnson: 724 quotes26 likes

“There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.”

Source: Taxation No Tyranny https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Taxation_No_Tyranny (1775)

“We never do anything consciously for the last time without sadness of heart.”

“People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.”

“As I know more of mankind, I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly.”

1783, p. 519
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

“Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence."

(, 1757.)”

Source: Works of Samuel Johnson

“I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.”

“Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.”

“Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.”

“That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.”

“The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.”

“men do not suspect faults which they do not commit”

“Language is the dress of thought.”

The Life of Cowley
Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)

“Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

September 19, 1777, p. 351, often misquoted as being hanged in the morning.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III
Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 3

“Your aspirations are your possibilities.”

“All intellectual improvement arises from leisure.”

“My nights are flatulent and unquiet.”

“Goldsmith, however, was a man who whatever he wrote, did it better than any other man could do.”

1778
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

“Gloomy calm of idle vacancy.”

Letter to Boswell. Dec. 8, 1763
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be renewed by intervals of absence.”

Samuel Johnson The Idler

No. 39 (January 13, 1759)
The Idler (1758–1760)

“I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.”

April 15, 1778, p. 392
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III