Samuel Johnson Quotes

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

~ Samuel Johnson

The true art of memory, is the art of attention

~ Samuel Johnson

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own, and if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

~ Samuel Johnson

To go and see one druidical temple is only to see that it is nothing, for there is neither art nor power in it; and seeing one is quite enough.

~ Samuel Johnson

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

~ Samuel Johnson

What', said he, ' makes the difference between man and all the rest of the animal creation? Every beast that strays beside me has the same corporeal necessities with myself; he is hungry and crops the grass, he is thirsty and drinks the stream, his thirst and hunger are appeased, he is satisfied and sleeps; he rises again and is hungry, he is again fed and is at rest. I am hungry and thirsty like him, but when thirst and hunger cease I am not at rest; I am, like him, pained with want, but am not, like him, satisfied with fullness. The intermediate hours are tedious and gloomy; I long again to be hungry that I may again quicken my attention. The birds peck the berries or the corn, and fly away to the groves where they sit in seeming happiness on the branches, and waste their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds. I likewise can call the lutanist and the singer, but the sounds that pleased me yesterday weary me today, and will grow yet more wearisome tomorrow. I can discover within me no power of perception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself delighted. Man has surely some latent sense for which this place affords no gratification, or he has some desires distinct from sense which must be satisfied before he can be happy.

~ Samuel Johnson

I can discover within me no power of perception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself delighted. Man has surely some latent sense for which this place affords no gratification, or he has some desires distinct from sense which must be satisfied before he can be happy.

~ Samuel Johnson

Hell is paved with good intentions.

~ Samuel Johnson

Is there such depravity in man as that he should injure another without benefit to himself?

~ Samuel Johnson

Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.

~ Samuel Johnson

Language is the dress of thought.

~ Samuel Johnson

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

~ Samuel Johnson

If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language.

~ Samuel Johnson

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

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

~ Samuel Johnson

A man who writes a book, thinks himself wiser or wittier than the rest of mankind; he supposes that he can instruct or amuse them, and the publick to whom he appeals, must, after all, be the judges of his pretensions.

~ Samuel Johnson

We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinions because we very often differ from ourselves.

~ Samuel Johnson

Babies do not want to hear about babies, they like to be told of giants and castles.

~ 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.

~ Samuel Johnson

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

~ Samuel Johnson

There is no problem the mind of man can set that the mind of man cannot solve.

~ Samuel Johnson

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

~ Samuel Johnson

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

~ Samuel Johnson

Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance.

~ Samuel Johnson

What cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.

~ Samuel Johnson

I look upon every day to be lost in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

~ Samuel Johnson

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.

~ Samuel Johnson

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

~ Samuel Johnson

No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred animadversion, than the negligence with which men overlook their own faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them, however frequently repeated.

~ Samuel Johnson

Pleasure, in itself harmless, may become mischievous, by endearing to us a state which we know to be transient and probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts from that of which every hour brings us nearer to the beginning, and of which no length of time will bring us to the end. Mortification is not virtuous in itself, nor has any other use, but that it disengages us from the allurements of sense. In the state of future perfection, to which we all aspire, there will be pleasure without danger, and security without restraint.

~ Samuel Johnson

We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

~ Samuel Johnson

Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.

~ Samuel Johnson

It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.

~ Samuel Johnson

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

~ Samuel Johnson

Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind.

~ Samuel Johnson

The composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelting to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity.

~ Samuel Johnson

Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerales.

~ Samuel Johnson

NE'TWORK: Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.......RETI'CULATED: Made of network; formed with interstitial vacuities.

~ Samuel Johnson

PU'RIST: one superstitiously nice in the use of words.

~ Samuel Johnson

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

~ Samuel Johnson