Quotes from Samuel Johnson

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

Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument.

Christianity is the highest perfection of humanity.

The duties of religion, sincerely and regularly performed, will always be sufficient to exalt the meanest and to exercise the highest understanding.

I will take no more physick, not even my opiates; for I have prayed that I may render up my soul to God unclouded.

A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.

Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect.

Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.

I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

I respect Millar, sir: he has raised the price of literature.

The number of such as live without the ardour of inquiry is very small, though many content themselves with cheap amusements, and waste their lives in researches of no importance.

The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.

Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself.

There are two types of knowledge. One is knowing a thing. The other is knowing where to find it.

Genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies and animates.

Every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.

Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it.

No knowledge is useless, with the exception of heraldry.

We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures

It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful.

Ignorance cannot always be inferred from inaccuracy; knowledge is not always present.

The seeds of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in public.