Samuel Johnson Quotes

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

~ Samuel Johnson

What is easy is seldom excellent.

~ Samuel Johnson

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

~ Samuel Johnson

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

~ Samuel Johnson

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

~ Samuel Johnson

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

~ 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

My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.

~ Samuel Johnson

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

~ Samuel Johnson

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

~ Samuel Johnson

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

~ Samuel Johnson

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.

~ Samuel Johnson

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

~ Samuel Johnson

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

~ Samuel Johnson

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

~ Samuel Johnson

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

~ Samuel Johnson

You can't be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who's for you and who's against you.

~ Samuel Johnson

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

~ Samuel Johnson

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.

~ Samuel Johnson

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.

~ Samuel Johnson

You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.

~ Samuel Johnson

There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.

~ Samuel Johnson

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

~ Samuel Johnson

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

~ Samuel Johnson

Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.

~ Samuel Johnson

Exercise is labor without weariness.

~ Samuel Johnson

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

~ Samuel Johnson

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

~ Samuel Johnson

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

~ Samuel Johnson

The future is purchased by the present.

~ Samuel Johnson