Quotes from Samuel Johnson

It is easy for a man who sits idle at home, and has nobody to please but himself, to ridicule or censure the common practices of mankind.

I remember a passage in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: "I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.

There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse.

The desires of man increase with his acquisitions.

Never believe extraordinary characters which you hear of people. Depend upon it, they are exaggerated. You do not see one man shoot a great deal higher than another.

A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.

A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries.

Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one.

It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.

Men who could willingly resign the luxuries and sensual pleasures of a large fortune cannot consent to live without the grandeur and the homage.

The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout.

A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

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

I also admit, that there are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits which are not good till they are rotten.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

Happiness is enjoyed only in proportion as it is known; and such is the state or folly of man, that it is known only by experience of its contrary.

Men who cannot deceive others are very often successful at deceiving themselves.

Labor, if it were not necessary for existence, would be indispensable for the happiness of man.

Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.

Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.

His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.