Quotes from Samuel Johnson

An old friend never can be found, and nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost.

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone.

That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not only be equal virtue on each part, but virtue of the same kind; not only the same end must be proposed, but the same means must be approved by both.

Nothing at all will be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

I have found men more kind than I expected, and less just.

No man ever yet became great by imitation.

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.

A man should be careful never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage. People may be amused at the time, but they will be remembered, and brought out against him upon some subsequent occasion.

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

No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.

It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend.

Commerce can never be at a stop while one man wants what another can supply; and credit will never be denied, while it is likely to be repaid with profit.

There may be other reasons for a man's not speaking in publick than want of resolution: he may have nothing to say.

No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance.

Of many, imagined blessings it may be doubted whether he that wants or possesses them had more reason to be satisfied with his lot.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.

It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other a horse still.

It is the just doom of laziness and a gluttony to be inactive without ease, and drowsy without tranquillity.

In a man's letters his soul lies naked.

It is unjust to claim the privileges of age and retain the playthings of childhood.