Quotes from Samuel Johnson

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.

When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.

He that teaches us anything which we knew not before is undoubtedly to be reverenced as a master.

This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea?

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.

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.

Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.

You can never be wise unless you love reading.

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.

Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

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

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

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

Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has, for twenty years, diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and, with tea, welcomes the morning.

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.