Quotes By Samuel Johnson

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

There are charms made only for distant admiration.

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.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

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

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

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

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

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

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.

Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.