Samuel Johnson

Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil; but its duty, like that of other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it. It should not be suffered to tyrannize

— Samuel Johnson

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

— Samuel Johnson

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

— Samuel Johnson

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.

— Samuel Johnson

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone; one should keep his friendships in constant repair.

— Samuel Johnson

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

— Samuel Johnson

Never, my dear Sir, do you take it into your head that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and my esteem; I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of exemplary piety.

— Samuel Johnson

The endearing elegance of female friendship.

— Samuel Johnson

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.

— Samuel Johnson

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.

— Samuel Johnson

The future is purchased by the present.

— Samuel Johnson

Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale.

— Samuel Johnson

Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.

— Samuel Johnson

Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child's rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man's whore.

— Samuel Johnson

Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.

— Samuel Johnson

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

— Samuel Johnson

The Supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things -- the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.

— Samuel Johnson

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

— Samuel Johnson

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.

— Samuel Johnson

He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.

— Samuel Johnson

No one ever became great by imitation.

— Samuel Johnson

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

— Samuel Johnson

Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it.

— Samuel Johnson

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

— Samuel Johnson

Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

The habit of looking on the best side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a years.

— Samuel Johnson

The chains of habit are generally too week to be felt, until they are too strong to be broken.

— Samuel Johnson

Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— 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

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, rather, a manner of traveling.

— Samuel Johnson

For who is pleased with himself.

— Samuel Johnson

Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

— Samuel Johnson

Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.

— Samuel Johnson

It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.

— Samuel Johnson

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged must end in disappointment.

— Samuel Johnson

I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

— Samuel Johnson

I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep the people from vice.

— Samuel Johnson

It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.

— Samuel Johnson

Sir, a man may be so much of everything, that he is nothing of anything.

— Samuel Johnson

As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.

— Samuel Johnson

Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

No man was ever great by imitation.

— Samuel Johnson

I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.

— Samuel Johnson

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

— Samuel Johnson

No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others, will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excites our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

It is easy to talk of sitting at home contented, when others are seeing or making shows. But not to have been where it is supposed, and seldom supposed falsely, that all would go if they could; to be able to say nothing when everyone is talking; to have no opinion when everyone is judging; to hear exclamations of rapture without power to depress; to listen to falsehoods without right to contradict, is, after all, a state of temporary inferiority, in which the mind is rather hardened by stubbornness, than supported by fortitude. If the world be worth winning let us enjoy it, if it is to be despised let us despise it by conviction. But the world is not to be despised but as it is compared with something better.

— Samuel Johnson

I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces.

— Samuel Johnson

A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs. A Judge may play a little at cards for his own amusement; but he is not to play at marbles, or chuck farthing in the Piazza.

— Samuel Johnson

To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

— Samuel Johnson

To act from pure benevolence is not possible for finite human beings, Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive.

— Samuel Johnson

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

More knowledge may be gained of a man's real character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral.

— Samuel Johnson

Man is not weak; knowledge is more than equivalent to force.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

Knowledge always demands increase; it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but will afterwards always propagate itself.

— Samuel Johnson

Knowledge is more than equivalent to force.

— Samuel Johnson

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

Labor, if it were not necessary for existence, would be indispensable for the happiness of man.

— Samuel Johnson

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

Language is the dress of thought.

— Samuel Johnson

What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.

— Samuel Johnson

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

— Samuel Johnson

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.

— Samuel Johnson

Turn on the prudent ant thy heedful eyes. Observe her labors, sluggard, and be wise.

— 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

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.

— Samuel Johnson

In a man's letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.

— Samuel Johnson

A short letter to a distant friend is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation -- a proof of unwillingness to do much, even where there is a necessity of doing something.

— Samuel Johnson

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.

— Samuel Johnson

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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.

— Samuel Johnson

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

— Samuel Johnson

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

— Samuel Johnson

I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.

— Samuel Johnson

Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.

— Samuel Johnson

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

— Samuel Johnson

What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson