Top 1762 Quotes & Sayings by Samuel Johnson
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English writer Samuel Johnson.
Last updated on November 23, 2024.
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.
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.
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
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.
Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.
Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.
A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.
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.
He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.
The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.
Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own.
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.
Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.
It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.
Words are but the signs of ideas.
My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.
The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
Exercise is labor without weariness.
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.
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.
Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
No man was ever great by imitation.
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.
Language is the dress of thought.
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.
Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.
The future is purchased by the present.
He who praises everybody, praises nobody.
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.
Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.
He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.
Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
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.
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.
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.
One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
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 a book.
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.
It is better to live rich than to die rich.
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
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.
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.
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.
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