Quotes by Samuel Johnson
There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.
There is no observation more frequently made by such as employ themselves in surveying the conduct of mankind, than that marriage, though the dictate of nature, and the institution of Providence, is yet very often the cause of misery, and that those who enter into that state can seldom forbear to express their repentance, and their envy of those whom either chance or caution hath withheld from it.
Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge.
Happiness is not a state to arrive at, rather, a manner of traveling.
You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument.
The Irish are a fair people - they never speak well of one another
When first the college rolls receive his name, The young enthusiast quilts his ease for fame;...
And then, Sir, there is this consideration, that if the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.
When once a man has made celebrity necessary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest and most timourous malignity, if not to take away his satisfaction, at least to withhold it. His enemies may indulge their pride by airy negligence a
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.
By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.
He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others.
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.
Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.
Wine makes a man more pleased with himself I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.
Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.
This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confess'd,- Slow rises worth by poverty depress'd
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.
Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.
I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.
