Quotes from Samuel Johnson

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Whatever you have, spend less.

A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.

Knock the "t" off the "can't."

Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetick.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.

Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail.

Life admits not of delays; when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.

This is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.

This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.

He was a very good hater.

My friend was of opinion that when a man of rank appeared in that character [as an author], he deserved to have his merit handsomely allowed.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Sorrow is the mere rust of the soul. Activity will cleanse and brighten it.

Many useful and valuable books lie buried in shops and libraries, unknown and unexamined, unless some lucky compiler opens them by chance, and finds an easy spoil of wit and learning.

You are the most unscottified of your countrymen.

Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,And pause a while from learning to be wise.There mark what ills the scholar's life assail—Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.

God bless you, my dear!

It is a foolish thing well done.

I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.