A Quote by Samuel Johnson

Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

Samuel Johnson

Quote Topics

Been Bring Company Dread Enables Frost Gives Had Him Knowledge Locked Locked Up Man Motion Neither Nor Nothing Only Out Puts Repressed Up Wine Wit

Quote Author

Samuel Johnson
English - Writer
September 18, 1709 - December 13, 1784

Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others. Sometimes it does. But the danger is, that while a man grows better pleased with himself, he may be growing less pleasing to others. Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has presented.

James Boswell

Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

Samuel Johnson

Every man feels that perception gives him an invincible belief of the existence of that which he perceives; and that this belief is not the effect of reasoning, but the immediate consequence of perception. When philosophers have wearied themselves and their readers with their speculations upon this subject, they can neither strengthen this belief, nor weaken it; nor can they shew how it is produced. It puts the philosopher and the peasant upon a level; and neither of them can give any other reason for believing his senses, than that he finds it impossible for him to do otherwise.

Thomas Reid

Logic only gives man what he needs... Magic gives him what he wants.

Tom Robbins

Poverty is such a relative thing; but no man is really poor till life becomes a desert island that gives him neither food nor shelter nor hope.

Henry Vollam Morton

Surely, surely the only one true knowledge of our fellow man is that which enables us to feel with him--which gives us a fine ear for the heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance and opinion.

George Eliot

The monster does not need the hero. it is the hero who needs him for his very existence. When the hero confronts the monster, he has yet neither power nor knowledge, the monster is his secret father who will invest him with a power and knowledge that can belong to one man only, and that only the monster can give.

Roberto Calasso

If nature puts a burden on a man by making him different, it also gives him a power.

John Fire Lame Deer

Well, God doesn't intervene in many of the situations we would like Him to because He would have to intervene in everything that we say and do that is wrong right the way through to some of the most terrible things happening in nations. What He does is He gives us signs that He is with us and that we can draw help from Him. Jesus changed water into wine. That had no function really. They had already run out of wine in the party so he was only aiding and abetting more drinking.

Gerald Coates

That there needed neither art nor science for going to GOD, but only a heart resolutely determined to apply itself to nothing but Him, or for His sake, and to love Him only.

Brother Lawrence

Man is the only one that knows nothing, that can learn nothing without being taught. He can neither speak nor walk nor eat, and in short he can do nothing at the prompting of nature only, but weep.

Pliny the Elder

The man who gives up accomplishes nothing and is only a hindrance. The man who does not give up can move mountains.

Ernest Hello

The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret -- that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Wine gives great pleasure, and every pleasure is of itself a good. and A man should cultivate his mind so as to have that confidence and readiness without wine, which wine gives.

Samuel Johnson

I could not become anything; neither good nor bad; neither a scoundrel nor an honest man; neither a hero nor an insect. And now I am eking out my days in my corner, taunting myself with the bitter and entirely useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot seriously become anything, that only a fool can become something.