Facts about Samuel Johnson 
Summary
Samuel Johnson was a famous Author from England, who lived between September 18, 1709 and December 13, 1784.
Biography
Usually known as Dr. Johnson, is one of the most important literary figures of England: poet, essayist, biographer, lexicographer, is considered by many as the best literary critic in English. Johnson was possessed of great talent and a unique prose style.
Devout Anglican and politically conservative, Dr. Johnson has been described as "undoubtedly the most distinguished man of letters in English history".
Despite the high quality of his work and enormous celebrity in life, Johnson is primarily remembered for being the subject of "the most notable example of biographical art in English letters," namely, the biography written by his friend James Boswell, the Life of Samuel Johnson, which has been inextricably linked. Known for his brilliant conversation, and thanks to its many contemporary biographers are known many anecdotes of Dr. Johnson.
Likewise, his aphoristic style, its philosophy based primarily on common sense, and elegance in writing, have made it the second most cited author in the English language after Shakespeare. Zodiac etc.
He is born under the zodiac virgo, who is known for Analyzing, Practical, Reflective, Observation, Thoughtful.
Our collection contains 151 quotes who is written / told by Samuel, under the main topics: Fitness, Marriage.
Related authors: James Boswell, Joseph Wood Krutch
Source / external links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson
Famous quotes by Samuel Johnson (151)
"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford"
"There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible"
"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"
"The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope"
"Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little"
"There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain"
"It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time"
"He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts"
"Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world"
"You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not - silence is the sharper sword"
"What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence"
"There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern"
"No man was ever great by imitation"
"Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy"
"Disease generally begins that equality which death completes"
"Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it"
"The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning"
"Power is not sufficient evidence of truth"
"It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other"
"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than open one's mouth and remove all doubt"
"I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world"
"Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out"
"Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity"
"Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable"
"What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more"
"Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth"
"No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction"
"Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments"
"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"
"To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution"
"There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman"
"There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern... No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn"
"I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read"
"I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him"
"The true art of memory is the art of attention"
"The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape"
"Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult"
"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"
"Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement"
"No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company"
"I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just"
"You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford"
"You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle"
"You can't be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who's for you and who's against you"
"Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see"
"Words are but the signs of ideas"
"Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor"
"Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others"
"Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost"
"Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel"
"Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates"
"Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess"
"We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting"
"We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself"
"We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us"
"Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle"
"To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity"
"To love one that is great, is almost to be great one's self"
"To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly"
"To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed"
"To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself"
"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"
"There are charms made only for distant admiration"
"The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty"
"The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities"
"The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down"
"The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it"
"The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity"
"The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are"
"The two offices of memory are collection and distribution"
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good"
"The chief glory of every people arises from its authors"
"The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken"
"The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery"
"That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner"
"Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return"
"Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again"
"Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure"
"Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy"
"So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something"
"So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other"
"Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel"
"Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again"
"One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts"
"Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content"
"Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable"
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome"
"Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment"
"Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it"
"Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him"
"No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library"
"Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed"
"Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise"
"Love is only one of many passions"
"Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent"
"Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment"
"Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions"
"Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified"
"Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich"
"Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles"
"Language is the dress of thought"
"It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality"
"It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done"
"It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability"
"Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful"
"In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it"
"If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance"
"If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?"
"If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair"
"I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual"
"I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney"
"He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else"
"He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade"
"He that undervalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them"
"He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage"
"Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance"
"Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life"
"From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life"
"Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions"
"Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them"
"By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time"
"By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show"
"Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed"
"Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all"
"Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen"
"Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise"
"Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned"
"At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest"
"Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess"
"Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble"
"Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?"
"All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it"
"All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it"
"All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil"
"Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own"
"Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us"
"Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself"
"Actions are visible, though motives are secret"
"A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain"
"A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him"
"A man will turn over half a library to make one book"
"A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority"
"A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner"
"A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good"
"A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself"
"A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything"
"A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek"
"A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still"
"A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice"
"Exercise is labor without weariness"
"Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives"
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