Samuel Johnson famous quotes

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

#Education #Curiosity #Genius

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

#Travel #Passion #Curiosity

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

#Inspirational #Sorry #Thinking

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Kindness #Inspiration #Social

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

#Change #Positive #Attitude

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

#Inspirational #Success #Respect

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Marriage #Wedding #Pain

Your aspirations are your possibilities.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Attitude #Possibility #Aspiration

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

#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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Family #Forgiveness #Wise

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

#Trust #Pain #Character

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

#Inspirational #Motivational #Positive

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

#Kindness #Waiting #Charity

The future is purchased by the present.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Future

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

#Marriage #Wedding #People

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

#Art #Writing #Thinking

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Inspirational #Book #Writing

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

#Food #Men #Thinking

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

#Travel #Men #Inferiority

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

#Motivational #Fitness #Food

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Inspirational #Criticism #Flattery

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.
-- Samuel Johnson

#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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Positive #Leadership #Wisdom

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

#Knowledge #Curiosity #Might

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

#Determination #Mind #Genius

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

#Journey

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

#Fathers Day #Struggle #Son

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

#Understanding #Argument #Found

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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Revenge #Resentment #Insult

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

#Love #Enthusiasm #Life Is

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

#Good Life #Thinking #Parent

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

#Life #Men #Matter

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

#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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Men #Emotional #Mind

No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Hypocrite #Men #Pleasure

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

#Civilization #History #Tests

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

#Debt #Calamity #Inconvenience

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

#Law #Acting #Benefits

The true art of memory is the art of attention.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Art #Memories #Attention

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

#Wisdom #Passion #Intelligence

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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Being Yourself #Being Single #Believe

Our aspirations are our possibilities.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Dream #Possibility #Aspiration

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

#Music #Thinking #Noise

The vicious count their years; virtuous, their acts.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Years #Charity #Vicious

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

#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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Country #Home #Medicine

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

#Sloth #Laziness #Ease

No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.
-- Samuel Johnson

#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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Perseverance #Years #Space

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

#Diversity #Joy #Life Is

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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Sorry #Hate #Philosophical

Nature never gives everything at once.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Giving

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

#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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Book #Fall #Writing

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

#Wine #Evil #Giving

Deviation from Nature is deviation from happiness.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Climate Change #Deviation

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

#People #Speak #Wells

Grief is a species of idleness.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Grief #Species #Idleness

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

#Success #Portraits #Persons

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

#Sorry #Communication #Language

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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Life #Lying #Wind

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Travel #Reality #Imagination

Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.
-- Samuel Johnson

#God #Men #Shame

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

#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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Pride #Past #May

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

#Kings #Heart #Law

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.
-- Samuel Johnson

#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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Imagination #Expectations #Arrogance

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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Morning #Years #Tea

Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Musical #Sensual #Vices

Books have always a secret influence on the understanding.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Book #Understanding #Secret

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

#Book #Moon #Light

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

#Curiosity #Mind #Degrees

All intellectual improvement arises from leisure.
-- Samuel Johnson

#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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Mind #Complaining #Fit

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

#Time #Mind #Dresses

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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Excellence #Lifetime #Labor

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it.
-- Samuel Johnson

#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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Guilt #Despair #Bars

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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Eye #Sight #Views

Hope is necessary in every condition.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Anticipation

Hope is itself a species of happiness...
-- Samuel Johnson

#Anticipation #Species

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

#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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Fall #Past #Years

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

#Wise #Men #Hands

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

#Fishing #Fool #Sticks

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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Past #Two #Judging

Nothing can be truly great which is not right.
-- Samuel Johnson

#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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Cities #Squares #Wish

Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Debt #Flattery #Praise

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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Evil #Desire #Patriot

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

#Art #Men #Drunk

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

#Would Be #Rich #Poor

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

#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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Envy #Causes #Misery

A man's mind grows narrow in a narrow place.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Travel #Men #Mind

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

#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.
-- Samuel Johnson

#Thinking #Mind #Strange