Samuel Johnson Quotes

The size of a man’s understanding may always be justly measured by his mirth.

Claret is the liquor for boys, port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

Why, Sir, 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.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.

And yet it fills me with wonder, that, in almost all countries, the most ancient poets are considered as the best: whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once; or that the first poetry of every nation surprised them as a novelty, and retained the credit by consent which it received by accident at first; or whether, as the province of poetry is to describe Nature and Passion, which are always the same, the first writers took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to those that followed them, but transcription of the same events, and new combinations of the same images. Whatever be the reason, it is commonly observed that the early writers are in possession of nature, and their followers of art: that the first excel in strength and innovation, and the latter in elegance and refinement.

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

Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.

A man must assume the moral burden of his own boredom.

I would rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

الصمت ينشر نفسه، وكلما زادت فترة الإعراض عن الكلام، صعب على المرء أن يجد ما يقوله

The pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted, and the mind can only repose on the stability of truth.

All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life . . . the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.