Samuel Johnson Quotations | Page 7

I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to he right.

Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, of sickness, or captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable; nor does it appear that the happiest lot of terrestrial existence can set us above the want of this general blessing; or that life, when the gifts of nature and of fortune are accumulated upon it, would not still be wretched, were it not elevated and delighted by the expectation of some new possession, of some enjoyment yet behind, by which the wish shall at last be satisfied, and the heart filled up to its utmost extent.

Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed.

I remember very well, when I was at Oxford, an old gentleman said to me, "Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowledge; for when years come upon you, you will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome task.

An exotic and irrational entertainment, which has been always combated, and always has prevailed.

The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life.

[The poet] must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.

I have two very cogent reasons for not printing any list of subscribers; one, that I have lost all the names, the other, that I have spent all the money.

Let me rejoice in the light which Thou hast imparted; let me serve Thee with active zeal, humbled confidence, and wait with patient expectation for the time in which the soul which Thou receivest shall be satisfied with knowledge.

The student who would build his knowledge on solid foundations, and proceed by just degrees to the pinnacles of truth, is directed by the great philosopher of France to begin by doubting of his own existence. In like manner, whoever would complete any arduous and intricate enterprise, should, as soon as his imagination can cool after the first blaze of hope, place before his own eyes every possible embarrassment that may retard or defeat him. He should first question the probability of success, and then endeavour to remove the objections that he has raised.

A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one; no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down.

Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one.

I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.

The man who feels himself ignorant should, at least, be modest.

Peevishness may be considered the canker of life, that destroys its vigor and checks its improvement; that creeps on with hourly depredations, and taints and vitiates what it cannot consume.

Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals.

How gloomy would be the mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he should never die: that what now acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall think on forever!

Our senses, our appetite, and our passions are our lawful and faithful guides in things that relate solely to this life.

Indolence is the devil's cushion.

It is a maxim that no man was ever enslaved by influence while he was fit to be free.

To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.

Irresolution and mutability are often the faults of men whose views are wide, and whose imagination is vigorous and excursive.

Rags will always make their appearance where they have a right to do it.

To buried merit rise the tardy bust.

All power of fancy over reason is a degree of madness.

Many a man is mad in certain instances, and goes through life without having it perceived. For example, a madness has seized a person of supposing himself obliged literally to pray continually; had the madness turned the opposite way, and the person thought it a crime ever to pray, it might not improbably have continued unobserved.

A man of sense and education should meet a suitable companion in a wife. It is a miserable thing when the conversation can only be such as whether the mutton should be boiled or roasted, and probably a dispute about that.

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

Among many parallels which men of imagination have drawn between the natural and moral state of the world, it has been observed that happiness as well as virtue consists in mediocrity.

The maxim of Cleobulus, "Mediocrity is best," has been long considered a universal principle, extending through the whole compass of life and nature. The experience of every age seems to have given it new confirmation, and to show that nothing, however specious or alluring, is pursued with propriety or enjoyed with safety beyond certain limits.

Employment and hardships prevent melancholy.

I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.

We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember.

An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature.

In sovereignty there are no gradations.

But grant, the virtues of a temp'rate prime Bless with an age exempt from scorn or crime; An age that melts with unperceived decay, And glides in modest Innocence away

There may be other reasons for a man's not speaking in publick than want of resolution: he may have nothing to say.

If the guardian or the mother Tell the woes of willful waste, Scorn their counsel and their pother, You can hang or drown at last.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may, by mere labour, be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert some judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of critic.

It is incident to physicians, I am afraid, beyond all other men, to mistake subsequence for consequence.

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

To wipe all tears from off all faces is a task too hard for mortals; but to alleviate misfortunes is often within the most limited power: yet the opportunities which every day affords of relieving the most wretched of human beings are overlooked and neglected with equal disregard of policy and goodness.

A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists without any practical regard to morals and religion; he may be learning not to live but to reason... while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed.

The joy of life is variety.

A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died; it was the triumph of hope over experience.

Wine gives great pleasure, and every pleasure is of itself a good. and A man should cultivate his mind so as to have that confidence and readiness without wine, which wine gives.

We go from anticipation to anticipation, not from satisfaction to satisfaction.

Whisky making is the art of making poison pleasant

..to write and to live are very different. Many who praise virtue, do no more than praise it.

Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine that he possesses some qualities, superior, either in kind or degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world; and, whatever apparent disadvantages he may suffer in the comparison with others, he has some invisible distinctions, some latent reserve of excellence, which he throws into the balance, and by which he generally fancies that it is turned in his favour.

Nobody can be taught faster than he can learn.

We often look with indifference on the successive parts of something that, if the whole were seen together, would shake us with emotion.

True enjoyments also keep people from vice.

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

It may be observed in general that the future is purchased by the present. It is not possible to secure distant or permanent happiness but by the forbearance of some immediate gratification. This is so evidently true with regard to the whole of our existence that all precepts of theology have no other tendency than to enforce a life of faith; a life regulated not by our senses but by our belief; a life in which pleasures are to be refused for fear of invisible punishments, and calamities sometimes to be sought, and always endured, in hope of rewards that shall be obtained in another state.

Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.

Merit rather enforces respect than attracts fondness.

Patron: One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is repaid in flattery.

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance.

Quotation is a good thing, there is a community of thought in it.

Slavery is now nowhere more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.

So willing is every man to flatter himself, that the difference between approving laws, and obeying them, is frequently forgotten; he that acknowledges the obligations of morality and pleases his vanity with enforcing them to others, concludes himself zealous in the cause of virtue.

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

The hour of reformation is always delayed; every delay gives vice another opportunity of fortifying itself by habit.

The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment.

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

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

Towering is the confidence of twenty-one.

We are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction.

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

We suffer equal pain from the pertinacious adhesion of unwelcome images, as from the evanescence of those which are pleasing and useful.

Whatever is proposed, it is much easier to find reasons for rejecting than embracing.

Most men are unwilling to be taught.

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

It is to be steadily inculcated, that virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness.

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay.

No man should attempt to teach others what he has never learned himself

People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.

It is astonishing that any man can forbear enquiring seriously whether there is a God; whether God is just; whether this life is the only state of existence.

Parents are by no means exempt from the intoxication of dominion.

To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind, because their preference was made without, a comparison; but it has never been my fortune to find, either in ancient or modern writers, any honourable mention of those, who have, with equal blindness, hated their country.

Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.

If you want to be a writer, then write. Write every day!

He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed. The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich.

Where no man thinks himself under any obligation to submit to another, and, instead of co-operating in one great scheme, every one hastens through by-paths to private profit, no great change can suddenly be made; nor is superior knowledge of much effect, where every man resolves to use his own eyes and his own judgment, and every one applauds his own dexterity and diligence, in proportion as he becomes rich sooner than his neighbour.

It is certain that success naturally confirms in us a favourable opinion of our own abilities. Scarce any man is willing to allot to accident, friendship, and a thousand causes, which concur in every event without human contrivance or interposition, the part which they may justly claim in his advancement. We rate ourselves by our fortune rather than our virtues, and exorbitant claims are quickly produced by imaginary merit.

He who fails to please in his salutation and address is at once rejected, and never obtains an opportunity of showing his latest excellences or essential qualities.

Shakespeare never had more than 6 lines together without a fault.

No knowledge is useless, with the exception of heraldry.

Celestial wisdom calms the mind.

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

The future is bought with the present.

A voyage to the moon, however romantick and absurd the scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the last century

The common people do not accurately adapt their thoughts to objects; nor, secondly, do they accurately adapt their words to their thoughts; they do not mean to lie; but, taking no pains to be exact, they give you very false accounts. A great part of their language is proverbial; if anything rocks at all, they say it rocks like a cradle; and in this way they go on.

As any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice.

Nothing concentrates one's mind so much as the realization that one is going to be hanged in the morning!

Poetry cannot be translation

It is our first duty to serve society, and after we have done that, we may attend wholly to the salvation of our own souls.

It is a common error, and the greater and more mischievous for being so common, to believe that repentance best becomes and most concerns dying men. Indeed, what is necessary every hour of our life is necessary in the hour of death too, and as long as one lives he will have need of repentance, and therefore it is necessary in the hour of death too; but he who hath constantly exercised himself in it in his health and vigor, will do it with less pain in his sickness and weakness; and he who hath practiced it all his life, will do it with more ease and less perplexity in the hour of his death.

It is necessary to hope... for hope itself is happiness.