Quotes from Samuel Johnson

Its proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.

The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

With these [Love, Patience, Faith] celestial Wisdom calms the mind,And makes the happiness she does not find.

All denominations of Christians have really little difference in point of doctrine, though they may differ widely in external forms.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

Nobody can write the life of a man, but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.

I never have sought the world; the world was not to seek me.

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

Club—An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions.

Here closed in death th' attentive eyesThat saw the manners in the face.

There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.

The future is purchased by the present.

Johnson had said that he could repeat a complete chapter of The Natural History of Iceland, from the Danish of Horrebow, the whole of which was exactly thus: "Ch. LXXII. Concerning snakes. There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island."

No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.

Grubstreet—The name of a street near Moorsfield, London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.

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

It is a man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.

But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in a few words.

Worth seeing? yes; but not worth going to see.

Declamation roar'd, while Passion slept.

Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious.