Quotes from Samuel Johnson

If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

A man is not obliged honestly to answer a question which should not properly be put.

Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

This is one of the disadvantages of wine: it makes a man mistake words for thought.

Exert your talents, and distinguish yourself, and don't think of retiring from the world, until the world will be sorry that you retire.

Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.

The duty of criticism is neither to depreciate nor dignify by partial representations, but to hold out the light of reason, whatever it may discover; and to promulgate the determinations of truth, whatever she shall dictate

Grief is a species of idleness.

Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself

Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.

Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation.

The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.

The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment

There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.

Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence. His name, like a shuttlecock, must be beat backward and forward, or it falls to the ground.

Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated; and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavors, by showing what has already been performed.