Top 1762 Quotes & Sayings by Samuel Johnson - Page 3
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English writer Samuel Johnson.
Last updated on April 15, 2025.
It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.
Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.
There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.
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.
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.
Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.
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.
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
Actions are visible, though motives are secret.
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.
Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.
Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.
A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
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.
There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.
A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.
Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.
Love is only one of many passions.
I am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.
The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.
It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.
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.
The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.
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.
I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.
He that overvalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.
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.
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.
I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.
Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
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.
The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.
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.
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.
The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.
A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.
Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.
We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.
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.
No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.
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.
The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.
When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.
If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?
All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.
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.
I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.
From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.
Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.
Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.
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.
You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not - silence is the sharper sword.
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.
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