Quotes from Samuel Johnson

Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits; the other recreates and revives them.

Hunting was the labour of the savages of North America, but the amusement of the gentlemen of England.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Scarcely any degree of judgment is sufficient to restrain the imagination from magnifying that on which it is long detained

Of the present state, whatever it be, we feel and are forced to confess the misery; yet when the same state is again at a distance, imagination paints it as desirable.

Irresolution and mutability are often the faults of men whose views are wide, and whose imagination is vigorous and excursive.

There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence.

Language is the dress of thought.

In all pleasures hope is a considerable part.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

Genius is that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates.

It is necessary to hope... for hope itself is happiness.

There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.

You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not - silence is the sharper sword.

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.

Power is gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent.

No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.

Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions