Quotes from Samuel Johnson

Come, let me know what it is that makes a Scotch man happy!

The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy.

A man guilty of poverty easily believes himself suspected.

The booksellers are generous liberal-minded men.

A man who is good enough to go to heaven is good enough to be a clergyman.

Ah! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him.

It is commonly a weak man who marries for love.

Memory is like all other human powers, with which no man can be satisfied who measures them by what he can conceive, or by what he can desire.

Depend upon it, sir, it is when you come close to a man in conservation that you discover what his real abilities are; to make a speech in a public assembly is a knack.

men do not suspect faults which they do not commit

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction. A man is pleased that his wife is dressed as well as other people, and the wife is pleased that she is dressed.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

Whatever advantage we snatch beyond a certain portion allotted us by at nature, is like money spent before it is due, which, at the time of regular payment, will be missed and regretted.

Keeping accounts, sir, is of no use when a man is spending his own money, and has nobody to whom he is to account. You won't eat less beef today because you have written down what it cost yesterday.

Other things may be seized by might, or purchased with money, but knowledge is to be gained only by study, and study to be prosecuted only in retirement.

I have two very cogent reasons for not printing any list of subscribers; one, that I have lost all the names, the other, that I have spent all the money.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life . . . the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

Nothing concentrates one's mind so much as the realization that one is going to be hanged in the morning!

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

Why, sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, Sir, is not in Nature.

No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.... There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.