Quotes from Samuel Johnson

To love one that is great, is almost to be great one's self.

A jest breaks no bones.

Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords; but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

You can't be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who's for you and who's against you.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

The vicious count their years; virtuous, their acts.

Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.

Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess, and to gain applause which he cannot keep.

All theory is against freedom of the will all experience for it.

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

He left the name at which the world grew pale,To point a moral, or adorn a tale.

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

Blown about by every wind of criticism.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.