Quotes from Samuel Johnson

It has been well observed, that the misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continuously repeated.

Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding.

The business of life is to go forward.

To me - the choice of life is become less important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice of eternity.

The main of life is composed of small incidents and petty occurrences; of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence.

The joy of life is variety.

It is astonishing that any man can forbear enquiring seriously whether there is a God; whether God is just; whether this life is the only state of existence.

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into the short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

Exercise is labor without weariness.

There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern... No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for any thing we allow them short of hanging.

You cannot give me an instance of any man who is permitted to lay out his own time contriving not to have tedious hours.

People may be taken in once, who imagine that an author is greater in private life than other men.

A book should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it.

Life protracted is protracted woe.

Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression; we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past.

Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.

Sir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is better than admiration, - judgement, to estimate things at their true value.

No man is obliged to do as much as he can do. A man is to have part of his life to himself.

Life is surely given us for higher purposes than to gather what our ancestors have wisely thrown away, and to learn what is of no value but because it has been forgotten.

It is not easy to surround life with any circumstances in which youth will not be delightful.