Samuel Johnson Quotations | Page 8

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

No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred animadversion, than the negligence with which men overlook their own faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them, however frequently repeated.

In a man’s letters his soul lies naked.

I do not care to speak ill of a man behind his back, but I believe he is an attorney.

You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument.

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

Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.

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

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay an author.

I have already enjoyed too much; give me something to desire.

Happiness," said he, "must be something solid and permanent, without fear and without uncertainty.

men do not suspect faults which they do not commit

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.

Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.

Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.

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

Enlarge my life with multitude of days, In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays; Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know, That life protracted is protracted woe. Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the passages of joy.

And panting Time toil'd after him in vain.

So different are the colors of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past; and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.

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

You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.

Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused

Change is not made without inconvenience.

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

There is less flogging in our great schools than formerly-but then less is learned there; so what the boys get at one end they lose at the other.

He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience.

Sir, you must not neglect doing a thing immediately good from fear of remote evil; -from fear of its being abused.

If we will have the kindness of others, we must endure their follies.

Idleness is often covered by turbulence and hurry. He that neglects his known duty and real employment naturally endeavours to crowd his mind with something that may bar out the remembrance of his own folly, and does any thing but what he ought to do with eager diligence, that he may keep himself in his own favour.

Since every man is obliged to promote happiness and virtue, he should be careful not to mislead unwary minds, by appearing to set too high a value upon things by which no real excellence is conferred.

He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.

What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.

Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings; let us be therefore cautious of how we strip her.

Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings.

All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.

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

Philosophers there are who try to make themselves believe that this life is happy; but they believe it only while they are saying it, and never yet produced conviction in a single mind.

No man can enjoy happiness without thinking that he enjoys it.

Health is so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly.

Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.

The triumph of hope over experience.

Whoever envies another confesses his superiority.

Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself.

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

Why, sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, Sir, is not in Nature.

When speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four.

It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.

The violence of war admits no distinction; the lance, that is lifted at guilt and power, will sometimes fall on innocence and gentleness.

Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.

To a people warlike and indigent, an incursion into a rich country is never hurtful.

The certainty that life cannot be long, and the probability that it will be much shorter than nature allows, ought to awaken every man to the active prosecution of whatever he is desirous to perform. It is true, that no diligence can ascertain success; death may intercept the swiftest career; but he who is cut off in the execution of an honest undertaking has at least the honour of falling in his rank, and has fought the battle, though he missed the victory.

He who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectation, or has any other effect than that of producing a moral sentence or peevish exclamation.

The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment.

That all who are happy are equally happy is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. A small drinking glass and a large one may be equally full, but the large one holds more than the small.

Whatever you have spend less.

Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean advantages.

More knowledge may be gained of a man's real character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral.

Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

Golf is a game in which you claim the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood.

Whatever is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity.

Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic.

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

No one ever became great by imitation.

He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.

Age is rarely despised but when it is, contemptible.

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected; and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an individual weight of calumny will be super-added.

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy and yet unenvied, to be healthy with physic, secure without a guard, and to obtain from the bounty of nature what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of art.

Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.

Poverty is often concealed in splendor, and often in extravagance. It is the task of many people to conceal their neediness from others. Consequently they support themselves by temporary means, and everyday is lost in contriving for tomorrow.

He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor.

Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation.

Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.

I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.

One of the amusements of idleness is reading without fatigue of close attention; and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read.

Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.

High people, sir, are the best; take a hundred ladies of quality, you'll find them better wives, better mothers, more willing to sacrifice their own pleasures to their children, than a hundred other woman.

Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect.

The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another; and each labors first to impose upon himself and then to propagate the imposture.

Long customs are not easily broken; he that attempts to change the course of his own life very often labors in vain; and how shall we do that for others, which we are seldom able to do for ourselves.

Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men.

Men have solicitude about fame; and the greater share they have of it, the more afraid they are of losing it.

It is necessary to the success of flattery, that it be accommodated to particular circumstances or characters, and enter the heart on that side where the passions are ready to receive it.

Flattery pleases very generally. In the first place, the flatterer may think what he says to be true; but, in the second place, whether he thinks so or not, he certainly thinks those whom he flatters of consequence enough to be flattered.

Happiness is enjoyed only in proportion as it is known; and such is the state or folly of man, that it is known only by experience of its contrary.

The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion.

A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice.

If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.

It is not uncommon to charge the difference between promise and performance, between profession and reality, upon deep design and studied deceit; but the truth is, that there is very little hypocrisy in the world.

Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy, affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly; the one completes a villain, the other only finishes a fop.

Books without the knowledge of life are useless.

He was so generally civil, that nobody thanked him for it.

I would advise no man to marry who is not likely to propagate understanding.

There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.

In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.