Samuel Johnson Quotes

What cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected even when it is associated with vice.

We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinions because we very often differ from ourselves.

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

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty sickness and captivity would without this comfort be insupportable.

Friendship peculiar boon of Heaven The noble mind's delight and pride To men and angels only given To all the lower world denied.

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life he will soon find himself left alone.

No one is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, their fondness for themselves.

It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity.

My congratulations to you, sir. 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.

PU'RIST: one superstitiously nice in the use of words.

A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity.

He knows not his own strength who hath not met adversity.

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.

Language is the dress of thought.

Promise large promise is the soul of an advertisement.

While grief is fresh every attempt to divert it only irritates.

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

I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

I have found men more kind than I expected and less just.

To go and see one druidical temple is only to see that it is nothing, for there is neither art nor power in it; and seeing one is quite enough.

Clear your mind of "can't."

A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.

Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

Round numbers are always false.

Kindness is in our power even when fondness is not.

Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly!

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected even when it is associated with vice.

That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem.

Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea?

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

He left the name at which the world grew pale To point a moral or adorn a tale.

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef love like being enlivened with champagne.

Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.

Oats n.s. A grain which in England is generally given to horses but in Scotland supports the people.

Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.

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.

Never speak of a man in his own presence. It is always indelicate and may be offensive .

Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerales.

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Always set high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.

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.

Despair is criminal.

No member of a society has a right to teach any doctrine contrary to what society holds to be true.

For a man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.

A fly Sir may sting a stately horse and make him wince but one is but an insect and the other a horse still.

There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not know it.

A fishing-rod was a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.

Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.

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

It is unjust to claim the privileges of age and retain the playthings of childhood.

Friendship is seldom lasting but between equals or where the superiority on one side is reduced by some equivalent advantage on the other.

To hear complaints is wearisome to the wretched and the happy alike.

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

The first years of man must make provision for the last.

A lexicographer a writer of dictionaries a harmless drudge.

Very few live by choice. Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight and with which he did not always willingly cooperate and therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his own.