Famous Quotes

Quotes by Samuel Johnson

• A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.
• A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.
• 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.
• All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.
• All theory is against freedom of the will all experience for it.
• All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.
• Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.
• 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.
• Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.
• Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
• Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.
• Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.
• Exercise is labor without weariness.
• Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
• Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
• Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
• Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
• He knows not his own strength who hath not met adversity.
• He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
• He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.
• He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.
• Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness, which this world affords.
• 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.
• I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.
• If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.
• If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
• In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
• Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
• It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.
• It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
• It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.
• It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.
• Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.
• Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
• Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.