Samuel Johnson Quotes

Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.

The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.

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.

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

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

[T]hey who complain, in peace, of the insolence of the populace, must remember, that their insolence in peace is bravery in war.

Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.

It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.

[S]uch is the delight of mental superiority, that none on whom nature or study have conferred it, would purchase the gifts of fortune by its loss.

To neglect at any time preparation for death, is to sleep on our post at a siege, but to omit it in old age, is to sleep at an attack.

There Poetry shall tune her sacred voice,
And wake from ignorance the Western World.

To-morrow's action! Can that hoary wisdom, Borne down with years, still doat upon tomorrow! That fatal mistress of the young, the lazy, The coward, and the fool, condemn'd to lose A useless life in waiting for to-morrow, To gaze with longing eyes upon to-morrow, Till interposing death destroys the prospect Strange! that this general fraud from day to day Should fill the world with wretches undetected. The soldier, labouring through a winter's march, Still sees to-morrow drest in robes of triumph; Still to the lover's long-expecting arms To-morrow brings the visionary bride. But thou, too old to hear another cheat, Learn, that the present hour alone is man's.

A thousand horrid Prodigies foretold it.
A feeble government, eluded Laws,
A factious Populace, luxurious Nobles,
And all the maladies of stinking states.

Unmoved though Witlings sneer and Rivals rail, Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail. He scorns the meek address, the suppliant strain. With merit needless, and without it vain. In Reason, Nature, Truth, he dares to trust: Ye Fops, be silent: and ye Wits, be just.

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