Quotes By Samuel Johnson

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

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.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

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.

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

No man was ever great by imitation.

Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.

So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern... No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.

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

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

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

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

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

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

What is easy is seldom excellent.

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.

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

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

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

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

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.

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