Quotes By Samuel Johnson

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

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

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.

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

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

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

Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little danger.

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

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.

I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

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.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.

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

It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.

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

He that undervalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

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

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.

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

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

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

Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?

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