Quotes from Samuel Johnson

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

Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken, themselves to errour. Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he doesn't possess.

Such, said Nekayah, is the state of life, none are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish it to change again. The world is not yet exhausted. Let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.

Unnumbered suppliants crowd Preferment's gate Athirst for wealth, and burning to be great; Delusive Fortune hears th' incessant call, They mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall.

The certainty that life cannot be long, and the probability that it will be much shorter than nature allows, ought to awaken every man to the active prosecution of whatever he is desirous to perform. It is true, that no diligence can ascertain success; death may intercept the swiftest career; but he who is cut off in the execution of an honest undertaking has at least the honour of falling in his rank, and has fought the battle, though he missed the victory.

My nights are flatulent and unquiet.

If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.

Is not a patron my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?

Every author does not write for every reader

When a king asked Euclid, the mathematician, whether he could not explain his art to him in a more compendious manner? he was answered, that there was no royal way to geometry.

No, Sir, claret is the liquor for boys; port, for men: but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

I found our speech copious without order, and energetic without rules

Better to save a citizen than to kill an enemy.

what reason did not dictate, reason cannot explain.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

A secret in his mouth, is like a wild bird put into a cage; whose door no sooner opens, but 'tis out.

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.

As soon as I enter the door of a tavern, I experience oblivion of care, and a freedom from solicitude. There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

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

Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly!

People have now a-days, (said he,) got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by lectures.—You might teach making of shoes by lectures!

It is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.

We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinions because we very often differ from ourselves.