Quotes from Samuel Johnson

Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice

It is the just doom of laziness and a gluttony to be inactive without ease, and drowsy without tranquillity.

Without economy none can be rich, and with it few will be poor.

Distance either of time or place is sufficient to reconcile weak minds to wonderful relations.

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

Don't accustom yourself to use big words for little matters

There are minds so impatient of inferiority, that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety

The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.

The man of affectation may, perhaps, be reclaimed, by finding how little he is likely to gain by perpetual constraint and incessant vigilance, and how much more securely he might make his way to esteem, by cultivating real, than by displaying counter

It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation from habit; he that has once studiously developed a style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease

Affectation naturally counterfeits those excellences which are placed at the greatest distance from possibility of attainment, because, knowing our own defects, we eagerly endeavor to supply them with artificial excellence

Among the numerous stratagems by which pride endeavors to recommend folly to regard, there is scarcely one that meets with less success than affectation, or a perpetual disguise of the real character by fictitious appearances

Spring is the season of gaiety, and winter of terror; in spring the heart of tranquility dances to the melody of the groves, and the eye of benevolence sparkles at the sight of happiness and plenty: in winter, compassion melts at universal calamity, and the tear of softness starts at the wailing of hunger and the cries of the creation in distress

Wine gives great pleasure; and every pleasure is of itself a good. It is a good, unless counterbalanced by evil.

He said that few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forgo the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive how to fill the interval between dinner and supper.

Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.

The accidental prescriptions of authority, when time has procured them veneration, are often confounded with the laws of nature, and those rules are supposed coeval with reason, of which the first rise cannot be discovered

I wish there were some cure, like the lover's leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession

To excite opposition and inflame malevolence is the unhappy privilege of courage made arrogant by consciousness of strength

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

None are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.

But scarce observed, the knowing and the bold Fall in the general massacre of gold; Wide-wasting pest! that rages unconfined, And crowds with crimes the records of mankind; For gold his sword the hireling ruffian draws,