Samuel Johnson Quotes
Samuel Johnson Quotes. Below is a collection of famous Samuel Johnson quotes. Here you can find the most popular and greatest quotes by Samuel Johnson. Share these quotations with your friends and family.
Small debts are like small gun shot; they are rattling around us on all sides and one can scarcely escape being wounded. Large debts are like canons, they produce a loud noise, but are of little danger.
By Samuel Johnson
We are inclined to believe those whom we don not know because they have never deceived us.
By Samuel Johnson
A fly may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.
By Samuel Johnson
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression.
By Samuel Johnson
Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor.
By Samuel Johnson
Those who attain to any excellence commonly spend life in some single pursuit, for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.
By Samuel Johnson
Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey than others, and detected faults and follies which escape vulgar observation.
By Samuel Johnson
It seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.
By Samuel Johnson
There is nothing so much seduces reason from vigilance as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman in marriage.
By Samuel Johnson
To see helpless infancy stretching out her hands, and pouring out her cries in testimony of dependence, without any powers to alarm jealousy, or any guilt to alienate affection, must surely awaken tenderness in every human mind; and tenderness once excited will be hourly increased by the natural contagion of felicity, by the repercussion of communicated pleasure, by the consciousness of dignity of benefaction.
By Samuel Johnson
It is easy to talk of sitting at home contented, when others are seeing or making shows. But not to have been where it is supposed, and seldom supposed falsely, that all would go if they could; to be able to say nothing when everyone is talking; to have no opinion when everyone is judging; to hear exclamations of rapture without power to depress; to listen to falsehoods without right to contradict, is, after all, a state of temporary inferiority, in which the mind is rather hardened by stubbornness, than supported by fortitude. If the world be worth winning let us enjoy it, if it is to be despised let us despise it by conviction. But the world is not to be despised but as it is compared with something better.
By Samuel Johnson
An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty. Men who have practiced tortures on animals without pity, relating them without shame, how can they still hold their heads among human beings?
By Samuel Johnson
Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.
By Samuel Johnson
Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.
By Samuel Johnson
Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.
By Samuel Johnson
Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.
By Samuel Johnson
Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
By Samuel Johnson
You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
By Samuel Johnson
You teach your daugthers the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
By Samuel Johnson
You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.
By Samuel Johnson
You must have taken great pains, sir; you could not naturally been so very stupid.
By Samuel Johnson
You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.
By Samuel Johnson
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.
By Samuel Johnson