Quotes from Samuel Johnson

Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel, and a coward: a scoundrel, for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman, to draw the trigger after his death.

In a man's letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.

"Enlarge my life with multitude of days!"In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays:Hides from himself his state, and shuns to knowThat life protracted is protracted woe.

Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free.

My diseases are an asthma and a dropsy and, what is less curable, seventy-five.

An old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

It is generally agreed, that few men are made better by affluence or exaltation.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

No man was ever great by imitation.

I am disappointed by that stroke of death [Garrick's], which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.

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.

The father of English criticism.

Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.

Sir, your levelers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear leveling up to themselves.

Most vices may be committed very genteelly: a man may debauch his friend's wife genteelly: he may cheat at cards genteelly.

Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.

He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning.

As with my hat upon my headI walk'd along the Strand,I there did meet another manWith his hat in his hand.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and... the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.

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

I remember a passage in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: "I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing."