Samuel Johnson Quotes

There is no matter what children should learn first, any more than what leg you should put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the meantime your backside is bare. Sire, while you stand considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learn't 'em both.

I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

The endearing elegance of female friendship.

This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confessed — Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed.

OATS — A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

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

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it.

His <nowiki>[</nowiki>David Garrick's] death has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.

The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.

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.

There is no problem the mind of man can set that the mind of man cannot solve.

As I know more of mankind, I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly.

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.