A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
A man will turn over half a library to make one book.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
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 Quote
Actions are visible, though motives are secret.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
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 Quote
Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
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 Quote
Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
He that undervalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
He who praises everybody, praises nobody.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
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 Quote
If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
It is better to live rich than to die rich.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than open one's mouth and remove all doubt.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Language is the dress of thought.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
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 Quote
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
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 Quote
Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little danger.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
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 Quote
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
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 Quote
The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern... No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Those who attain to any excellence commonly spend life in some single pursuit, for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
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 Quote
To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
To love one that is great, is almost to be great one's self.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
Words are but the signs of ideas.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not - silence is the sharper sword.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
- Samuel Johnson Quote
