The Best Samuel Johnson quotes

Never mind the use––do it! — Samuel Johnson

There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful. — Samuel Johnson

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else. — Samuel Johnson

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last. — Samuel Johnson

Hope is an amusement rather than a good, and adapted to none but very tranquil minds. — Samuel Johnson

The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind. — Samuel Johnson

My dear friend, clear your mind of can’t. — Samuel Johnson

Celestial wisdom calms the mind. — Samuel Johnson

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. — Samuel Johnson

A man’s mind grows narrow in a narrow place. — Samuel Johnson

Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye. — Samuel Johnson

Nothing so concentrates the mind as the sight of the gallows. — Samuel Johnson

W]ith an unquiet mind, neither exercise, nor diet, nor physick can be of much use. — Samuel Johnson

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope. — Samuel Johnson

A person loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal. — Samuel Johnson

No mind is much employed upon the present recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments. — Samuel Johnson

It is man’s own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age. — Samuel Johnson

The business of life is to go forward. — Samuel Johnson

As long as one lives he will have need of repentance. — Samuel Johnson

Life protracted is protracted woe. — Samuel Johnson

Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship. — Samuel Johnson

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. — Samuel Johnson

He who attempts to do all will waste his life in doing little. — Samuel Johnson

Spite and ill–nature are among the most expensive luxuries in life. — Samuel Johnson

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions. — Samuel Johnson

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment. — Samuel Johnson

The joy of life is variety. — Samuel Johnson

When a Man is tried of London, he is tired of life. — Samuel Johnson

Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do. — Samuel Johnson

Books without the knowledge of life are useless. — Samuel Johnson

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties. — Samuel Johnson

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed. — Samuel Johnson

A book should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it. — Samuel Johnson

Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding. — Samuel Johnson

The hopes of zeal are not wholly groundless. — Samuel Johnson

Hope is itself a species of happiness. — Samuel Johnson

It is necessary to hope… for hope itself is happiness. — Samuel Johnson

Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler. — Samuel Johnson

When there is no hope, there can be no endeavor. — Samuel Johnson

Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage. — Samuel Johnson

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence. — Samuel Johnson

The triumph of hope over experience. — Samuel Johnson

All industry must be excited by hope. — Samuel Johnson

Evil is uncertain in the same degree as good, and for the reason that we ought not to hope too securely, we ought not to fear with to much dejection. — Samuel Johnson

I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian. — Samuel Johnson

The history of mankind is little else than a narrative of designs which have failed and hopes that have been disappointed. — Samuel Johnson

Hope is necessary in every condition. — Samuel Johnson

Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach. — Samuel Johnson

Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation. — Samuel Johnson

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library. — Samuel Johnson

We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure. — Samuel Johnson

No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures. — Samuel Johnson

The public pleasures of far the greater part of mankind are counterfeit. — Samuel Johnson

It very seldom happens to a man that his business is his pleasure. — Samuel Johnson

Friendship may well deserve the sacrifice of pleasure, though not of conscience. — Samuel Johnson

The expense is damnable, the position is ridiculous, and the pleasure fleeting. — Samuel Johnson

The great source of pleasure is variety. — Samuel Johnson

Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice. — Samuel Johnson

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures. — Samuel Johnson

The true effect of genuine politeness seems to be rather ease than pleasure. — Samuel Johnson

A married man has many cares, but a bachelor no pleasures. — Samuel Johnson

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation. — Samuel Johnson

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth. — Samuel Johnson

Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse. — Samuel Johnson

The liberty of using harmless pleasure will not be disputed; but it is still to be examined what pleasures are harmless. — Samuel Johnson

Pleasure that is obtained by unreasonable and unsuitable cost must always end in pain. — Samuel Johnson

He that never labors may know the pains of idleness, but not the pleasures. — Samuel Johnson

His death eclipsed the gayety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure. — Samuel Johnson

To do something is in every man’s power. — Samuel Johnson

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not. — Samuel Johnson

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute. — Samuel Johnson

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth. — Samuel Johnson

Power is gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent. — Samuel Johnson

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new. — Samuel Johnson

There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence. — Samuel Johnson

Some have little power to do good, and have likewise little strength to resist evil. — Samuel Johnson

No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it. — Samuel Johnson

He that has once concluded it lawful to resist power, when it wants merit, will soon find a want of merit, to justify his resistance to power. — Samuel Johnson

All power of fancy over reason is a degree of madness. — Samuel Johnson

Dogs have not the power of comparing. A dog will take a small piece of meat as readily as a large, when both are before him. — Samuel Johnson

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain eitHer honesty or courage. — Samuel Johnson

A thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another man with a power of versification equal to that of Pope. — Samuel Johnson

Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings. — Samuel Johnson

Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. — Samuel Johnson

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them. — Samuel Johnson

A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it. — Samuel Johnson

At seventy–seven it is time to be in earnest. — Samuel Johnson

And panting Time toil’d after him in vain. — Samuel Johnson

Life, however short, is made still shorter by waste of time. — Samuel Johnson

We never do anything consciously for the last time without sadness of heart. — Samuel Johnson

Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination. — Samuel Johnson

Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from time to come. — Samuel Johnson

Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression; we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past. — Samuel Johnson

Distance either of time or place is sufficient to reconcile weak minds to wonderful relations. — Samuel Johnson

Complaints are vain; we will try to. do better another time. To–morrow and to–morrow. A few designs and a few failures, and the time of designing is past. — Samuel Johnson

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. — Samuel Johnson

The time will come to every human being when it must be known how well he can bear to die. — Samuel Johnson

Reason will by degrees submit to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness. — Samuel Johnson

With what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that the time spent at the toilet is lost in vanity. — Samuel Johnson

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. — Samuel Johnson

A soldier’s time is passed in distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption. — Samuel Johnson

Prejudice is a great time–saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts. Prejudice not being founded on reason cannot be removed by argument. — Samuel Johnson

The present is never a happy state to any human being. — Samuel Johnson

The applause of a single human being is of great consequence. — Samuel Johnson

A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity. — Samuel Johnson

To strive with difficulties, and To conquer them, is the highest human felicity. — Samuel Johnson

The cure for the greatest part of human miseries is not radical, but palliative. — Samuel Johnson

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure. — Samuel Johnson

Human happiness has always its abatements; the brightest sunshine of success is not without a cloud. — Samuel Johnson

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man’s virtues the means of deceiving him. — Samuel Johnson

Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals. — Samuel Johnson

Such is the emptiness of human enjoyment that we are always impatient of the present. Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust. — Samuel Johnson

Memory is like all other human powers, with which no man can be satisfied who measures them by what he can conceive, or by what he can desire. — Samuel Johnson

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down. — Samuel Johnson

I never have sought the world; the world was not to seek me. — Samuel Johnson

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords. — Samuel Johnson

Ah! Sir, a boy’s being flogged is not so severe as a man’s having the hiss of the world against him. — Samuel Johnson

This world, where much is to be done and little to be known. — Samuel Johnson

You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe. — Samuel Johnson

The finest landscape in the world is improved by a good inn in the foreground. — Samuel Johnson

Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. — Samuel Johnson

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world. — Samuel Johnson

The disturbers of our happiness, in this world, are our desires, our griefs, and our fears. — Samuel Johnson

I would rather see the portraIt of a dog that I know, than all the allegorIcal paIntIngs they can show me In the world. — Samuel Johnson

Much mischief is done in the world with very little interest or design. — Samuel Johnson

Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favour. — Samuel Johnson

There is in this world no real delight (excepting those of sensuality), but exchange of ideas in conversation. — Samuel Johnson

The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy. — Samuel Johnson

No knowledge is useless, with the exception of heraldry. — Samuel Johnson

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without Integrity is dangerous and dreadful. — Samuel Johnson

Ignorance cannot always be inferred from inaccuracy; knowledge is not always present. — Samuel Johnson

It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful. — Samuel Johnson

No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance. — Samuel Johnson

There are two types of knowledge. One is knowing a thing. The other is knowing where to find it. — Samuel Johnson

As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which he cannot apply will make no man wise. — Samuel Johnson

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing–it only hastens fools to rush in where angels fear to tread. — Samuel Johnson

The seeds of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in public. — Samuel Johnson

Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. — Samuel Johnson

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise. — Samuel Johnson

Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us. — Samuel Johnson

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles. — Samuel Johnson

Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it. — Samuel Johnson

Other things may be seized by might, or purchased with money, but knowledge is to be gained only by study, and study to be prosecuted only in retirement. — Samuel Johnson