Samuel Johnson Quotes

He that would pass the latter part of life with honour and decency, must, when he is young, consider that he shall one day be old; and remember, when he is old, that he has once been young.

I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to be right.

Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance and the parent of Liberty.

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

Sir, your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.

Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger at his death.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he doesn't possess.

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

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

Johnson said that he could repeat a complete chapter of "The Natural History of Iceland" from the Danish of Horrebow, the whole of which was exactly thus: "There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island." 62 [Chap. lxxii.]

O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.

Resolve to spend a certain number of hours every day amongst your books.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write.

Fiction cannot move so much, but that the attention may be easily transferred; and though it must be allowed that pleasing melancholy be sometimes interrupted by unwelcome levity, yet let it be considered likewise, that melancholy is often not pleasing, and that the disturbance of one man may be the relief of another; that different auditors have different habitudes; and that, upon the whole, all pleasure consists in variety.

A transition from an author's book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.