Quotes from Samuel Johnson

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

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 a book.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.

The most Heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.

Shakespeare never had six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven, but this does not refute my general assertion.

We often look with indifference on the successive parts of something that, if the whole were seen together, would shake us with emotion.

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality.

A man's mind grows narrow in a narrow place.

A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.

In traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.

He that would travel for the entertainment of others should remember that the great object of remark is human life.

When a Man is tried of London, he is tired of life.

Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter.

Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

We are told, that the black bear is innocent; but I should not like to trust myself with him.

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

The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence.

Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgment and friendship are like being enlivened.

The coquette has companions, indeed, but no lovers,--for love is respectful and timorous; and where among her followers will she find a husband?

Still we love The evil we do, until we suffer it.

The love of fame is a passion natural and universal, which no man, however high or mean, however wise or ignorant, was yet able to despise.

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.