Quotes from Samuel Johnson

Nature never gives everything at once.

Where necessity ends, desire and curiosity begin; and no sooner are we supplied with everything nature can demand than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites.

Man's chief merit consists in resisting the impulses of his nature.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Spite and ill-nature are among the most expensive luxuries in life.

An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature.

Games are good or bad as to their nature; all may be perverted.

Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.

New arts are long in the world before poets describe them; for they borrow everything from their predecessors, and commonly derive very little from nature or from life.

Scarce any man becomes eminently disagreeable but by a departure from his real character, and an attempt at something for which nature or education has left him unqualified.

The care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature.

Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly placed within our reach.

Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge, and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things, when they are shown their form or told their use.

For patience, sov'reign o'er transmuted ill.

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

There is little peace or comfort in life if we are always anxious as to future events. He that worries himself with the dread of possible contingencies will never be at rest.

Mutual cowardice keeps us in peace.

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

In solitude we have our dreams to ourselves, and in company we agree to dream in concert.

Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause awhile from letters, to be wise.

The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights.

Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.