Quotes from Samuel Johnson

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

It is a man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grow torpid in old age.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.

Marriage, Sir, is much more necessary to a man than to a woman; for he is much less able to supply himself with domestick comforts.

Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.

Never, my dear Sir, do you take it into your head that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and my esteem; I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of exemplary piety.

Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.

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

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

Self-love is often rather arrogant than blind; it does not hide our faults from ourselves, but persuades us that they escape the notice of others.

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

The endearing elegance of female friendship.

Those that have loved longest love best.

Love and magic have a great deal in common. They enrich the soul, delight the heart. And they both take practice.

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.

It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination

Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it.

Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.

When a man marries a widow his jealousies revert to the past: no man is as good as his wife says her first husband was

I am not so much inclined to wonder that marriage is sometimes unhappy, as that it appears so little loaded with calamity; and cannot but conclude that society has something in itself eminently agreeable to human nature, when I find its pleasures so

Before marriage a woman is pensive, after marriage, expensive