Samuel Johnson Quotes

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“It is necessary to hope… for hope itself is happiness.”

“Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.”

“A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.”

“This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.”

“Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.”

“While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.”

“Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”

“Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.”

“Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea?”

“New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.”

“The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.”

“He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.”

“You can never be wise unless you love reading.”

“If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.”

“Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument.”

“Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.”

“A man may be so much of every thing, that he is nothing of any thing.”

“Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.)”

“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.”

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

“Language is the dress of thought.”

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

“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.”

“Gloomy calm of idle vacancy.”

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

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

“PENSION — An allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.”

“A man might write such stuff for ever, if he would abandon his mind to it.”

“Wine makes a man more pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.”

“There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow; but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.”

“The world is not yet exhausted: let me see something to-morrow which I never saw before.”

“There is now less flogging in our great schools than formerly, but then less is learned there; so that what the boys get at one end they lose at the other.”

“The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.”

“God bless you, my dear!”

“Norway, too, has noble wild prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, Sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!”

“CLUB — An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions.”

“How small of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!
Still to ourselves in every place consigned,
Our own felicity we make or find.
With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.”

“OATS — A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”