Samuel Johnson Quotes:

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

source: - The Rambler, No. 103, March 12, 1751.

Topics: Education, Curiosity, Genius, Lexicographer, Vigorous

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.

Topics: Travel, Passion, Curiosity, Contemplative, Excursions

Exert your talents, and distinguish yourself, and don't think of retiring from the world, until the world will be sorry that you retire.

Topics: Inspirational, Sorry, Thinking, Developing, Personal Growth And Development

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

Topics: Kindness, Inspiration, Social, Social Good, Fondness

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.

source: - Samuel Johnson (1851). “The beauties of Johnson: choice selections from his works”, p.41

Topics: Change, Positive, Attitude, Inspirational Attitude, Keep A Positive Attitude

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Topics: Inspirational, Success, Respect, Customer Experience, Inspirational Character

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

Topics: Marriage, Wedding, Pain, Marriage Speech, Happy Love

Your aspirations are your possibilities.

Topics: Attitude, Possibility, Aspiration

Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.

Topics: Blessing, Choices

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.

Topics: Family, Forgiveness, Wise, Value Of Time, Haste Makes Waste

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

Topics: Trust, Pain, Character, Not Trusting, Trustworthiness

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

Topics: Inspirational, Motivational, Positive, Taking Risks, Motivation And Determination

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

Topics: Kindness, Waiting, Charity

The future is purchased by the present.

source: - Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1809). “The Rambler”, p.94

Topics: Future

It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination.

Topics: Marriage, Wedding, People

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

Topics: Art, Writing, Thinking

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

Topics: Inspirational, Book, Writing, Reading Writing

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.

Topics: Food, Men, Thinking, Earnestness, Eating Food

A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.

Topics: Travel, Men, Inferiority, Capri

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

Topics: Motivational, Fitness, Food, Eating Food, Cooking And Eating

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

Topics: Inspirational, Criticism, Flattery

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.

Topics: Memories, Two, Office

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.

Topics: Positive, Leadership, Wisdom

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

Topics: Knowledge, Curiosity, Might, Useful Knowledge

The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.

Topics: Determination, Mind, Genius, Talent And Genius, True Genius

Worth seeing, yes; but not worth going to see.

Topics: Journey

There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence.

Topics: Fathers Day, Struggle, Son, Love My Dad, Father And Son

Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

Topics: Understanding, Argument, Found, Obliged

What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it; for folly doesn't deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect.

Topics: Revenge, Resentment, Insult

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking

Topics: Love, Enthusiasm, Life Is, Enthusiasm For Life, Prosecution

The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.

Topics: Good Life, Thinking, Parent

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.

Topics: Life, Men, Matter, Lexicographer, Moralist

There are in every age new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.

Topics: Errors, Age, Prejudice

No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.

Topics: Men, Emotional, Mind, Airy

No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.

Topics: Hypocrite, Men, Pleasure

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

Topics: Civilization, History, Tests

Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.

Topics: Debt, Calamity, Inconvenience, Owing A Debt

The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.

Topics: Law, Acting, Benefits, Human Wisdom

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

Topics: Art, Memories, Attention, Short Term Memory

He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.

Topics: Wisdom, Passion, Intelligence, External Influences

There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself.

Topics: Being Yourself, Being Single, Believe

Our aspirations are our possibilities.

Topics: Dream, Possibility, Aspiration, Power Of Intention, Infinite Possibilities

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

Topics: Music, Thinking, Noise

The vicious count their years; virtuous, their acts.

Topics: Years, Charity, Vicious

When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.

Topics: Kindness, Littles, Return

He that would travel for the entertainment of others, should remember that the great object of remark is human life. Every nation has something peculiar in its manufactures, its works of genius, its medicines, its agriculture, its customs, and its policy. He only is a useful traveller, who brings home something by which his country might be benefitted; who procures some supply of want, or some mitigation of evil, which may enable his readers to compare their condition with that of others, to improve it whenever it is worse, and whenever it is better to enjoy it.

Topics: Country, Home, Medicine

It is the just doom of laziness and gluttony to be inactive without ease and drowsy without tranquility.

Topics: Sloth, Laziness, Ease, Gluttony, Drowsy

No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.

Topics: People, Liberty, Virtue

Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance. Those that walk with vigor, three hours a day, will pass in seven years a space equal to the circumference of the globe.

Topics: Perseverance, Years, Space, Seven Years

The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence.

Topics: Diversity, Joy, Life Is, Intervals, Joy Of Life

Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.

Topics: Sorry, Hate, Philosophical

Nature never gives everything at once.

Topics: Giving

Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence.

Topics: Writing, Silence, Abuse

It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.

Topics: Book, Fall, Writing, Writers And Writing, Shuttlecock

Wine gives great pleasure; and every pleasure is of itself a good. It is a good, unless counterbalanced by evil.

Topics: Wine, Evil, Giving

Deviation from Nature is deviation from happiness.

Topics: Climate Change, Deviation

The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another.

Topics: People, Speak, Wells, Funny Irish, Irish Writers

Grief is a species of idleness.

Topics: Grief, Species, Idleness

Each person's work is always a portrait of himself.

Topics: Success, Portraits, Persons

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

Topics: Sorry, Communication, Language, Language And Communication, Language Culture

He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale.

Topics: Life, Lying, Wind, Oar

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality.

Topics: Travel, Reality, Imagination, Travel And Tourism, My Journey

Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.

Topics: God, Men, Shame

Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.

Topics: Pain, Thinking, Feels

A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed.

Topics: Pride, Past, May

How small of all that human hearts endure/That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.

Topics: Kings, Heart, Law, Felicity

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.

Topics: Success, Pleasure, Difficulty

No cause more frequently produces bashfulness than too high an opinion of our own importance. He that imagines an assembly filled with his merit, panting with expectation, and hushed with attention, easily terrifies himself with the dread of disappointing them, and strains his imagination in pursuit of something that may vindicate the veracity of fame, and show that his reputation was not gained by chance.

Topics: Imagination, Expectations, Arrogance, Bashfulness

I am a hardened and shameless tea drinker, who has, for twenty years, diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and, with tea, welcomes the morning.

Topics: Morning, Years, Tea, Kettles, Drinkers

Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Topics: Musical, Sensual, Vices, Sensual Pleasure

Books have always a secret influence on the understanding.

Topics: Book, Understanding, Secret

Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.

Topics: Book, Moon, Light

A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity.

Topics: Curiosity, Mind, Degrees

All intellectual improvement arises from leisure.

Topics: Intellectual, Statistics, Leisure

Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

Topics: Perseverance, Writing, Effort

When any fit of gloominess, or perversion of mind, lays hold upon you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaints.

Topics: Mind, Complaining, Fit, Perversion

Language is the dress of thought; every time you talk your mind is on parade.

Topics: Time, Mind, Dresses, Efficacy

How small of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place consigned, Our own felicity we make or find. With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.

Topics: Kings, Heart, Law

Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.

Topics: Excellence, Lifetime, Labor

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it.

Topics: Suffering, Survivor

Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, the midnight murderer bursts the faithless bar; invades the sacred hour of silent rest and leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast.

Topics: Guilt, Despair, Bars, Faithless

The eye of the mind, like that of the body, can only extend its view to new objects, by losing sight of those which are now before it.

Topics: Eye, Sight, Views

Hope is necessary in every condition.

Topics: Anticipation, Heart Filled

Hope is itself a species of happiness...

Topics: Anticipation, Species

I know not any crime so great that a man could contrive to commit as poisoning the sources of eternal truth.

Topics: Men, Crime, Source

He that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past years must learn to know the present value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to the ground.

Topics: Fall, Past, Years, Particles

No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had

Topics: Wise, Men, Hands

A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.

Topics: Fishing, Fool, Sticks, Angling

Sir, sorrow is inherent in humanity. As you cannot judge two and two to be either five, or three, but certainly four, so, when comparing a worse present state with a better which is past, you cannot but feel sorrow. It is not cured by reason, but by the incursion of present objects, which bear out the past.

Topics: Past, Two, Judging

Nothing can be truly great which is not right.

Topics: Fairness

Sir, if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but must survey the innumerable little lanes and courts. It is not in the showy evolutions of buildings, but in the multiplicity of human habitations which are crowded together, that the wonderful immensity of London consists.

Topics: Cities, Squares, Wish, Showy, Multiplicity

Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.

Topics: Debt, Flattery, Praise, Acknowledgment

It is unpleasing to represent our affairs to our own disadvantage; yet it is necessary to shew the evils which we desire to be removed.

Topics: Evil, Desire, Patriot

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.

Topics: Art, Men, Drunk, Getting Drunk

Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.

Topics: Would Be, Rich, Poor, Frugality, Frugal

Most men think indistinctly, and therefore cannot speak with exactness . . .

Topics: Men, Thinking, Speak

There is no observation more frequently made by such as employ themselves in surveying the conduct of mankind, than that marriage, though the dictate of nature, and the institution of Providence, is yet very often the cause of misery, and that those who enter into that state can seldom forbear to express their repentance, and their envy of those whom either chance or caution hath withheld from it.

Topics: Envy, Causes, Misery

A man's mind grows narrow in a narrow place.

Topics: Travel, Men, Mind

A translator is to be like his author; it is not his business to excel him.

Topics: Translators

What a strange narrowness of mind now is that, to think the things we have not known are better than the things we have known.

Topics: Thinking, Mind, Strange

Man's chief merit consists in resisting the impulses of his nature.

Topics: Men, Temptation, Merit

Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free.

Topics: Writing, Suffering, Lovers

Curiosity is the thirst of the soul.

Topics: Soul, Curiosity, Thirst

The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is to attempt but little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made by short flights frequently repeated; the most lofty fabrics of science are formed by the continued accumulation of single propositions.

Topics: Art, Learning, Science, Excursions

In solitude we have our dreams to ourselves, and in company we agree to dream in concert.

Topics: Dream, Solitude, Concerts

A fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot.

Topics: Block, Cutting, Men

To a poet nothing can be useless.

Topics: Useless, Poet

Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.

source: - Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy, 1831.

Topics: Examination, Fraud, Dread

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.

source: - Samuel Johnson (1834). “The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia: A Tale”, p.14

Topics: Motivational, Perseverance, Determination, Self Determination, Inspirational Determination

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.

Topics: Revenge, Passion, Justice, Exacting Revenge, Crimes Of Passion

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

Topics: Life, Tired, Men, Londoners, City Of London

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Topics: Patriotism, Lasts, Scoundrels, Patriotism And Nationalism, Militarism

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Topics: Education, Honesty, Integrity, Antithesis, Knowledge Is Dangerous

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.

Topics: Marriage, Men, Wife, Married Man

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.

Topics: Gratitude, Pain, Revenge, Exacting Revenge, Recompense

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.

Topics: Imitation, Arise, Absurdity, Inspirations Being Yourself, Lexicographer

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

Topics: Mistake, Food, Wine, Vineyards, Old Wine

My dear friend, clear your mind of can't.

source: - Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 15 May 1783)

Topics: Mind, Complacency, Dear Friend

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

Topics: Art, Money, Work, Blockheads

Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own.

Topics: Agriculture, Giving, Riches, Organic Agriculture

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Topics: Inspirational, Nature, Travel, Nomad, Travel And Tourism

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.

Topics: Science, Belief, Favourite, Good Writers

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.

Topics: Time, Powerful, Book, Library Research, Inspiring Writing

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.

Topics: Funny, Army, Men, Lexicographer, Army Navy

Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Topics: Life, Money, Kindness, Kindness And Compassion, Goodness And Kindness

What is easy is seldom excellent.

Topics: Easy, Excellent

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

Topics: Men, Wife, Greek, Good Wife

You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not - silence is the sharper sword.

Topics: Silence, Silence Is

No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.

Topics: Appreciation, Spring, Flower, Spring Day, Spring Flowers

When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.

Topics: Life, Attitude, Choices

By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.

Topics: Travel, World, London

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

Topics: Nature, Women, Maturity

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

Topics: Life, Motivational, Confidence, Inspiring Self Esteem, Building Confidence

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

Topics: Usual, Complaining, Pity

Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.

Topics: Happiness, Drinking, Wine

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

Topics: Inspirational, Teaching, Learning, Information Knowledge, Knowledge And Information

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

Topics: Drinking, Wine, Men, Best Wine, Wine Toast

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.

source: - Samuel Johnson (1787). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with His Life, and Notes on His Lives of the Poets, by Sir John Hawkins, Knt. In Eleven Volumes ...”, p.211

Topics: Night, Thinking, Bed

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

Topics: Love, Wise, Dream, Cheesy Love, Loved And Lost

Words are but the signs of ideas.

Topics: Ideas

Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

Topics: Humor, Focus, Excellence, Pursuit Of Excellence

Love is only one of many passions.

Topics: Passion, Love Is

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

Topics: Book, Men, Library

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

Topics: Art, Poetry, Uniting, Great Poetry

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

Topics: Happiness, Success, Men, Enlargement, Patrimony

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.

Topics: Wise, Wisdom, Knowledge, Truth And Falsehood, Useless Knowledge

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

Topics: Happiness, Animal, Equality, Subordination

The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

Topics: Good Morning, Lying, Sunshine

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.

Topics: Life, Use, Leisure, Burdens Of Life

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

Topics: Love, Friendship, Feelings, Sparkling, Champagne Drinking

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Topics: Reading, Men, Political

I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

Topics: Dog, Pain, Portraits

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

Topics: Design, Easy, Difficult, Industrial Design, Graphic Artist

No man was ever great by imitation.

Topics: Men, Imitation

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

Topics: World, Staircases

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

Topics: Sunshine, Shade, Brightness, Coolness, Happy Sunshine

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

Topics: Wisdom, Reflection, Men

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

Topics: Wisdom, Funny Retirement, Wealth, Retirement Card, Retirement Party

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

Topics: Money, Home, House, Domesticity

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

Topics: Education, Reading, Men, Inclination, Reading And Learning

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

Topics: Evil, Poverty, Argument

Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.

Topics: Opinion, Values, Bounty

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.

Topics: Men, Thinking, Tests, Martyrdom

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

Topics: Good And Evil, Evidence

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.

Topics: Wise, Witty, Business, Advertising And Marketing, Advertising Business

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

Topics: Happiness, Men, Alcohol, Bars Drinking, Good Beer

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

source: - Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 19 Sept. 1777)

Topics: Carpe Diem, Men, Focus, Fortnight

When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.

Topics: Men, Sea, Land, Land And Sea, Sea Life

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.

Topics: Life, Motivational, Achievement

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.

Topics: Happiness, Art, Men

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.

Topics: Happiness, Believe, Long

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.

Topics: Art, Powerful, Criticism

Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of the spring: no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of the Nile.

Topics: Spring, Flower, Autumn

The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.

Topics: Wisdom, Knowledge, Knowing, Knowing Something, Learning Knowledge

A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.

Topics: Book, Reading, Writing, Joy Of Reading, Reading And Writing

The Church does not superstitiously observe days, merely as days, but as memorials of important facts. Christmas might be kept as well upon one day of the year as another; but there should be a stated day for commemorating the birth of our Saviour, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected.

Topics: Christmas, Years, Memorial, Christmas Eve, Christian Christmas

As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.

Topics: Happiness, Men, Good Man

Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.

Topics: Inspirational, Happiness, Knowledge

A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.

Topics: Writing, Men, Political, Marksman

Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument.

Topics: Religion, Atheism, Prejudice, Racial Justice

The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.

Topics: Reading, Writing, Enjoy Life

Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea?

Topics: Wine, Numbers, Glasses, Cups Of Tea, Wine Glass

You can never be wise unless you love reading.

source: - James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1824). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., Comprehending an Account of His Studies, and Numerous Works, in Chronological Order: A Series of His Epistolary Correspondence and Conversations with Many Eminent Persons; and Various Original Pieces of His Composition, Never Before Published; the Whole Exhibiting a View of Literature and Literary Men in Great Britain, for Near Half a Century During which He Flourished”, p.101

Topics: Wise, Reading, Being Wise, Love Of Reading

No one is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, their fondness for themselves.

Topics: Respect, Doe, Increase, Fondness

Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.

Topics: Fear, Women, Thinking

I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

Topics: Men, Littles, Done

People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.

Topics: Business, People, Needs

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.

Topics: Happy, Sparks, Unexpected, Looking For Happiness, Perfect Happiness

Knock the 't' off the 'can't.'

Topics: Confidence

Cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.

Topics: Food, Cucumbers, Vinegar, Eating Food, Cooking And Eating

Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else.

Topics: Food, People, Mind

We seldom learn the true want of what we have till it is discovered that we can have no more.

Topics: Happiness, Want

To have the management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience and habitual exercise...Let him take a course of chemistry, or a course of rope-dance, or a course of any thing to which he is inclined at the time. Let him contrive to have as many retreats for his mind as he can, as many things to which it can fly from itself.

Topics: Happiness, Art, Exercise

Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.

Topics: Happiness, Would Be, Abstinence

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Every advance into knowledge opens new prospects, and produces new incitements to farther progress.

Topics: Happiness, Curiosity, Progress, Incitement, Prospects

The disturbers of happiness are our desires, our griefs, and our fears.

Topics: Happiness, Grief, Desire

To have the management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience and habitual exercise.

Topics: Happiness, Art, Exercise

To hear complaints is wearisome alike to the wretched and the happy.

Topics: Happiness, Complaints

To preserve health is a moral and religious duty, for health is the basis of all social virtues. We can no longer be useful when not well.

source: - "The Letters of Samuel Johnson, Volume I: 1731-1772".

Topics: Religious, Health, Moral

When there is no hope, there can be no endeavor.

Topics: Hope, Endeavor, No Hope