Samuel Johnson quotes

“Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.”

— Samuel Johnson

“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 a book.”

— Samuel Johnson

“Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.”

— Samuel Johnson

“To love one that is great, is almost to be great one's self.”

— Samuel Johnson

“Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.”

— Samuel Johnson

“When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.”

— Samuel Johnson

“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”

— Samuel Johnson

“A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.”

— Samuel Johnson

“Actions are visible, though motives are secret.”

— Samuel Johnson

“It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.”

— Samuel Johnson

“Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.”

— Samuel Johnson

“You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”

— Samuel Johnson

“Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.”

— Samuel Johnson

“Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.”

— Samuel Johnson

“The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.”

— Samuel Johnson

“Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— 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

“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

“To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.”

— Samuel Johnson

“Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.”

— Samuel Johnson

“A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.”

— Samuel Johnson

“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.”

— Samuel Johnson

“All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.”

— Samuel Johnson

“You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.”

— Samuel Johnson

“There are charms made only for distant admiration.”

— Samuel Johnson

“Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.”

— 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

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

— Samuel Johnson

“You can't be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who's for you and who's against you.”

— Samuel Johnson