Quotes by Samuel Johnson
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
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.
The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.
To love one that is great, is almost to be great one's self.
Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
Those who attain to any excellence commonly spend life in some single pursuit, for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.
Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.
He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.
We could not have had a better dinner had there been a Synod of Cooks.
To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.
Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.
I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance.
Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.
When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.
He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.
They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.
It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
Words are but the signs of ideas.
