Quotes By Samuel Johnson

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

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.

Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

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.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

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.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

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

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

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

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.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

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.

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.

The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

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.

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.

Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.

Language is the dress of thought.

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

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.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.