Quotes By Samuel Johnson

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.

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

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

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

Love is only one of many passions.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

The future is purchased by the present.

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.

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

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.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

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

My dear friend, clear your mind of can't.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

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

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.