Quotes from Samuel Johnson

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

Golf is a game in which you claim the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood.

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.

Hope is necessary in every condition.

Hope itself is a species of happiness, and perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.

Learn that the present hour alone is man's.

Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, nor more wise when he had.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

No mind is much employed upon the present recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments.

Nothing so concentrates the mind as the sight of the gallows.

Of all the griefs that harass the distrest, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.

Old age is not a disease- it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses.

Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. But let it be considered that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self- interest.

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.

Round numbers are always false.

Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.

That fellow seems to posses but one idea and that is the wrong one.

The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove.

The Irish are a fair people - they never speak well of one another.