Samuel Johnson Quotes

A truly strong and sound mind is the mind that can equally embrace great things and small.

Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.

Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.

Corneille is to Shakespeare…as a clipped hedge is to a forest.

I would rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible.

An odd thought strikes me:—we shall receive no letters in the grave.

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

No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.

Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

Talking of the Comedy of  ‘The Rehearsal’, he said ‘It has not enough wit to keep it sweet.’ This was easy;—he therefore caught himself, and pronounced a more rounded sentence; ‘It has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction.’

Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.

As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly.

It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.