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Samuel Johnson - From the Application category:
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Beginning category:
Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Belief category:
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Books category:
A man will turn over half a library to make one book. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Books category:
A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Books category:
In my early years I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Concentration category:
Nothing more wonderfully concentrates a man's mind than the sure knowledge he is to be hanged in the morning. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Consideration category:
The arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Criticism category:
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. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Criticism category:
Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at a very small expense. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Critics category:
There is a certain race of men that either imagine it their duty, or make it their amusement, to hinder the reception of every work of learning or genius, who stand as sentinels in the avenues of fame, and value themselves upon giving Ignorance and Envy the first notice of a prey. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Critics category:
Every man can exert such judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom Nature has made weak, and Idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a Critic. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Critics category:
You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Deception category:
Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities he does not possess, and to gain applause which he cannot keep. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Disappointment category:
The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Disappointment category:
Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Dreams category:
But these were the dreams of a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Dreams category:
In solitude we have our dreams to ourselves, and in company we agree to dream in concert. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Drunkenness category:
A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Drunkenness category:
A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Education category:
The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things – the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Effort category:
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Envy category:
Envy feels not its own happiness, but when it may be compared with the misery of others. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Excellence category:
Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Expectation category:
We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Fame category:
Every man, however hopeless his pretensions may appear, has some project by which he hopes to rise to reputation; some art by which he imagines that the attention of the world will be attracted; some quality, good or bad, which discriminates him from the common herd of mortals, and by which others may be persuaded to love, or compelled to fear him. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Fire category:
Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Friendship category:
If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Genius category:
The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Greatness category:
Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Greatness category:
-on Thomas Gray...
He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Health category:
Health is so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Hope category:
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Imitation category:
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Integrity category:
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Knowledge category:
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Life category:
Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Life category:
Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess and to gain applause which he cannot keep. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Life category:
I am disappointed by that stroke of death, which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Life category:
For we that live to please must please to live. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Light category:
We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Love category:
The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Love category:
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Masters category:
He that teaches us anything which we knew not before is undoubtedly to be reverenced as a master. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Memory category:
The true art of memory is the art of attention. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Mistakes category:
Shakespeare never had six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven, but this does not refute my general assertion. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Music category:
Of all noises, music is the least disagreeable. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Music category:
-referring to music...
The only sensual pleasure without vice. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Music category:
-on hearing a famous violinist...
Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Opportunity category:
To improve the golden moment of opportunity and catch the good that is within our reach is the great art of life. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Perception category:
We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Perfection category:
It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Perseverance category:
Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Perspective category:
Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Pleasure category:
Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought; our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Pleasure category:
It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Poetry category:
To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a delicious employment of the poets. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Politics category:
Why, Sir, most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Possibilities category:
Knock the 't' off the 'can't. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Procrastination category:
He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Profession category:
There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Questions category:
There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner? (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Questions category:
Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Quotations category:
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Recognition category:
I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Recognition category:
-in a letter to Lord Chesterfield, 1755...
Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, has been delayed till I am indifferent... and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Religion category:
God Himself, sir, does not propose to judge a man until his life is over. Why should you and I? (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Sculpture category:
A fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Solitude category:
If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Standards category:
He who praises everybody praises nobody. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Subject category:
I would rather see a portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Time category:
I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave; and success and miscarriage are empty sounds. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Truth category:
-on sceptics...
Truth, Sir, is a cow, which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Truth category:
Round numbers are always false. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Wonder category:
All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Words category:
To make dictionaries is dull work. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Words category:
I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas... (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Writing category:
A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Writing category:
The two most engaging powers of an author: new things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new. (Samuel Johnson)
Samuel Johnson - From the Writing category:
Was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress? (Samuel Johnson)
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