Samuel Johnson Quotes

My dear friend, clear your mind of cant… You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in Society: but don’t think foolishly.

Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea.

There is a wicked inclination in most people to suppose an old man decayed in his intellects. If a young or middle-aged man, when leaving a company, does not recollect where he laid his hat, it is nothing; but if the same inattention is discovered in an old man, people will shrug up their shoulders, and say, ‘His memory is going.’

How few of his friends’ houses would a man choose to be at when he is sick.

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.

I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark.

Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attract to you.

Why, that is, because, dearest, you’re a dunce.

Sir, I have two very cogent reasons for not printing any list of subscribers;—one, that I have lost all the names,—the other, that I have spent all the money.

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

A wise Tory and a wise Whig, I believe, will agree. Their principles are the same, though their modes of thinking are different.

I am disappointed by that stroke of death, which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.

An exotic and irrational entertainment.

It…had the effect, as was ludicrously said, of making Gay rich, and Rich gay.

To charge all unmerited praise with the guilt of flattery, and to suppose that the encomiast always knows and feels the falsehood of his assertions, is surely to discover great ignorance of human nature and human life. In determinations depending not on rules, but on experience and comparison, judgement is always to some degree subject to affection. Very near to admiration is the wish to admire.

The father of English criticism.

The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.

Trade could not be managed by those who manage it, if it had much difficulty.

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.

Boswell: Is not the Giant’s Causeway worth seeing?

Johnson: Worth seeing? Yes, but not worth going to see.