Samuel Johnson Quotes

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

~ Samuel Johnson

In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

~ Samuel Johnson

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

~ Samuel Johnson

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

Perhaps the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in a few words.We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered; and he may therefore be justly numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to recur habitually to the mind.

~ Samuel Johnson

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

~ Samuel Johnson

It has been observed in all ages that the advantages of nature or of fortune have contributed very little to the promotion of happiness; and that those whom the splendour of their rank, or the extent of their capacity, have placed upon the summits of human life, have not often given any just occasion to envy in those who look up to them from a lower station; whether it be that apparent superiority incites great designs, and great designs are naturally liable to fatal miscarriages; or that the general lot of mankind is misery, and the misfortunes of those whose eminence drew upon them an universal attention, have been more carefully recorded, because they were more generally observed, and have in reality only been more conspicuous than others, not more frequent, or more severe.

~ Samuel Johnson

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

~ Samuel Johnson

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

~ Samuel Johnson

A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.

~ Samuel Johnson

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.

~ Samuel Johnson

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

~ Samuel Johnson

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

~ Samuel Johnson

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

~ Samuel Johnson

The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.

~ Samuel Johnson

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

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

~ Samuel Johnson

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.

~ Samuel Johnson

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.

~ Samuel Johnson

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to look at catalogues, and at the backs of books in libraries.

~ Samuel Johnson

Ignorance, when voluntary, is criminal, and a man may be properly charged with that evil which he neglected or refused to learn how to prevent.

~ Samuel Johnson

People have now a-days, (said he,) got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by lectures.—You might teach making of shoes by lectures!

~ Samuel Johnson

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life . . . the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

~ Samuel Johnson

My congratulations to you, sir. Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

~ Samuel Johnson

Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.

~ Samuel Johnson

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.

~ Samuel Johnson

I know not why any one but a schoolboy in his declamation should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another.

~ Samuel Johnson

Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired.

~ Samuel Johnson

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

~ Samuel Johnson

You can never be wise unless you love reading.

~ Samuel Johnson

The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.

~ Samuel Johnson

Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible. [on hearing a famous violinist]

~ Samuel Johnson

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

~ Samuel Johnson

Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye, and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we leave behind us is always lessening, and that which we approach increasing in magnitude.

~ Samuel Johnson

[C]ourage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.

~ Samuel Johnson

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

~ Samuel Johnson

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.

~ Samuel Johnson

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

~ Samuel Johnson

Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.

~ Samuel Johnson

Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend.

~ Samuel Johnson