Quotes from 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.

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

Every man has some favorite topic of conversation, on which, by a feigned seriousness of attention, he may be drawn to expatiate without end.

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

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

No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.

The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.

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.

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

The round of a passionate man's life is in contracting debts in his passion, which his virtue obliges him to pay. He spends his time in outrage and acknowledgment, injury and reparation.

No man can fall into contempt but those who deserve it.

Wit will never make a man rich, but there are places where riches will always make a wit.

You despise a man for avarice; but you do not hate him.

Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.

Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding.

This man [Chesterfield], I thought, had been a Lord among wits; but I find he is only a wit among Lords.

It is better a man should be abused than forgotten.

If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination.

There is no book so poor that it would not be a prodigy if wholly made by a single man.

It may be laid down as a position which seldom deceives, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong.

This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.

Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth his having.

When people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer their inferior while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them.