Quotes from Samuel Johnson

To hear complaints is wearisome to the wretched and the happy alike.

Advice is offensive, it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves.

No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.

There must always be some advantage on one side or the other, and it is better that advantage should be had by talents than by chance.

There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance.

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

You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument.

It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.

All imposture weakens confidence and chills benevolence.

Wine gives great pleasure, and every pleasure is of itself a good. and A man should cultivate his mind so as to have that confidence and readiness without wine, which wine gives.

Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.

Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.

In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence.

Courage is the greatest of all the virtues. Because if you haven't courage you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected even when it is associated with vice.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

When we see our enemies and friends gliding away before us, let us not forget that we are subject to the general law of mortality, and shall soon be where our doom will be fixed forever.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

It seems to be remarkable that death increases our veneration for the good, and extenuates our hatred for the bad.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

Actions are visible, though motives are secret.

I have ever since (his wife's death) seemed to myself broken off from mankind; a kind of solitary wanderer in the wild of life, without any direction, or fixed point of view: a gloomy gazer on the world to which I have little relation

How can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives

Friendship is not always the sequel of obligation