Samuel Johnson

This is one of the disadvantages of wine: it makes a man mistake words for thought.
– Samuel Johnson

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, rather, a manner of traveling.
– Samuel Johnson

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
– Samuel Johnson

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived
us.
– Samuel Johnson

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength,
but perseverance.
– Samuel Johnson

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence.
– Samuel Johnson

A cucumber should be well-sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.
– Samuel Johnson

Example is always more efficacious than precept.
– Samuel Johnson

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to
trust.
– Samuel Johnson

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is
produced as by a good tavern.
– Samuel Johnson

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
– Samuel Johnson

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
– Samuel Johnson

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.
– Samuel Johnson

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.
– Samuel Johnson

Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or
the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as
much as themselves.
– Samuel Johnson

No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.
– Samuel Johnson

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.
– Samuel Johnson

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.
– Samuel Johnson

Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.
– Samuel Johnson

A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.
– Samuel Johnson

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
– Samuel Johnson

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world
affords.
– Samuel Johnson

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.
– Samuel Johnson

All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of
the resistless force of perseverance.
– Samuel Johnson

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
– Samuel Johnson

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

The best of conversations occur when there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm quiet
interchange of sentiments.
– Samuel Johnson

To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.
– Samuel Johnson

Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced
of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.
– Samuel Johnson

You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument.
– Samuel Johnson

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.
– Samuel Johnson

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.
– Samuel Johnson

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to
be silent as to his works.
– Samuel Johnson

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.
– Samuel Johnson

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.
– Samuel Johnson

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things
may be, to see them as they are.
– Samuel Johnson

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.
– Samuel Johnson

To convince any man against his will is hard, but to please him against his will is justly
pronounced by Dryden to be above the reach of human abilities.
– Samuel Johnson

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
– Samuel Johnson

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to
throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage.
– Samuel Johnson

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything
but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.
– Samuel Johnson

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship
is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
– Samuel Johnson

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
– Samuel Johnson

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is
dangerous and dreadful.
– Samuel Johnson

Hell is paved with good intentions.
– Samuel Johnson

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
– 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

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
– Samuel Johnson

The triumph of hope over experience.
– Samuel Johnson, on second marriages

By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she
made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.
– Samuel Johnson

The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of
the public.
– Samuel Johnson

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there is so much
falsehood in the world.
– Samuel Johnson

The great source of pleasure is variety.
– Samuel Johnson

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
– Samuel Johnson

Words are men’s daughters, but God’s sons are things.
– Samuel Johnson

It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in
general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.
– Samuel Johnson

When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.
– Samuel Johnson

There is little peace or comfort in life if we are always anxious as to future events. He that
worries himself with the dread of possible contingencies will never be at rest.
– Samuel Johnson

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
– Samuel Johnson

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the
part that is original is not good.
– Samuel Johnson

There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and
believed.
– Samuel Johnson

He who praises everybody praises nobody.
– Samuel Johnson

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

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
– Samuel Johnson

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.
– Samuel Johnson

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

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

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.
– Samuel Johnson

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are
avenged.
– Samuel Johnson

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

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.
– Samuel Johnson