Samuel Johnson Quotes

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him. A man when he gets into a higher sphere, into other habits of life, cannot keep up all his former connections. Then, Sir, those who knew him formerly upon a level with themselves, may think that they ought still to be treated as on a level, which cannot be; and an acquaintance in a former situation may bring out things which it would be very disagreeable to have mentioned before higher company, though, perhaps, everybody knows of them.

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

There is now less flogging in our great schools than formerly, but then less is learned there; so that what the boys get at one end they lose at the other.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

Attack is the reaction; I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds.

A cow is a very good animal in the field; but we turn her out of a garden.

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died: Johnson said, it was the triumph of hope over experience.

Johnson observed, that "he did not care to speak ill of any man behind his back, but he believed the gentleman was an attorney."

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Shakspeare never has six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven: but this does not refute my general assertion.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.