Samuel Johnson Quotes

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

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

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
Samuel Johnson

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
Samuel Johnson

The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endue it.
Samuel Johnson

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
Samuel Johnson

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

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

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

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

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

The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.
Samuel Johnson

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

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.
Samuel Johnson

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.
Samuel Johnson

Their learning is like bread in a besieged town: every man gets a little, but no man gets a full meal.
Samuel Johnson

There are charms made only for distant admiration.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.
Samuel Johnson

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

They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.
Samuel Johnson

Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.
Samuel Johnson

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.
Samuel Johnson

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

Those who attain to any excellence commonly spend life in some single pursuit, for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.
Samuel Johnson

To love one that is great, is almost to be great one's self.
Samuel Johnson

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.
Samuel Johnson

Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.
Samuel Johnson

Truth, Sir, is a cow, which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.
Samuel Johnson

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

We could not have had a better dinner had there been a Synod of Cooks.
Samuel Johnson

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
Samuel Johnson

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.
Samuel Johnson

What is easy is seldom excellent.
Samuel Johnson

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

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.
Samuel Johnson

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
Samuel Johnson

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

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

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.
Samuel Johnson

When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.
Samuel Johnson

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

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

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

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

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

Words are but the signs of ideas.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
Samuel Johnson

You never find people laboring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful income.
Samuel Johnson

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
Samuel Johnson

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.
Samuel Johnson

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