Top 500 Samuel Johnson Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.”

— Samuel Johnson

452. “Norway, too, has noble prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, Sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England!”

— Samuel Johnson

453. “In a man’s letters his soul lies naked.”

— Samuel Johnson

454. “Expectation improperly indulged in must end in disappointment.”

— Samuel Johnson

455. “Exercise is labor without weariness.”

— Samuel Johnson

456. “Pity is not natural to man. Children always are cruel. Savages are always cruel.”

— Samuel Johnson

457. “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

458. “His most frequent ailment was the headache which he used to relieve by inhaling the steam of coffee.”

— Samuel Johnson

459. “Whoever commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him who he deceives, but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

461. “A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.”

— Samuel Johnson

462. “Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.”

— Samuel Johnson

463. “Unconstraint is the grace of conversation.”

— Samuel Johnson

464. “While an author is yet living, we estimate his powers by his worst performance; and when he is dead, we rate him by his best.”

— Samuel Johnson

465. “Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.”

— Samuel Johnson

466. “This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.”

— Samuel Johnson

467. “I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.”

— Samuel Johnson

468. “Year chases year, decay pursues decay, Still drops some joy from with’ring life away; New forms arise, and diff’rent views engage.”

— Samuel Johnson

469. “The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life.”

— Samuel Johnson

470. “Then with no throbs of fiery pain, No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain, And freed his soul the nearest way.”

— Samuel Johnson

471. “There are occasions on which all apologies are rudeness.”

— Samuel Johnson

472. “The dangers gather as the treasures rise.”

— Samuel Johnson

473. “It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept; and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence.”

— Samuel Johnson

474. “A woman of fortune being used the handling of money, spends it judiciously; but a woman who gets the command of money for the first time upon her marriage, has such a gust in spending it, that she throws it away with great profusion.”

— Samuel Johnson

475. “The liberty of the press is a blessing when we are inclined to write against others, and a calamity when we find ourselves overborne by the multitude of our assailants.”

— Samuel Johnson

476. “Mutual cowardice keeps us in peace.”

— Samuel Johnson

477. “It is generally agreed, that few men are made better by affluence or exaltation.”

— Samuel Johnson

478. “The cure for the greatest part of human miseries is not radical, but palliative.”

— Samuel Johnson

479. “Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”

— Samuel Johnson

480. “Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings.”

— Samuel Johnson

481. “The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality.”

— Samuel Johnson

482. “Life protracted is protracted woe.”

— Samuel Johnson

483. “Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind, Obedient passions, and a will resigned.”

— Samuel Johnson

484. “Books have always a secret influence on the understanding; we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas; he that reads books of science, thogh without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing...”

— Samuel Johnson

485. “We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

487. “And panting Time toil’d after him in vain.”

— Samuel Johnson

488. “Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.”

— Samuel Johnson

489. “Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.”

— Samuel Johnson

490. “The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England.”

— Samuel Johnson

491. “If what happens does not make us richer, we must welcome it if it makes us wiser.”

— Samuel Johnson

492. “No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.”

— Samuel Johnson

493. “Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.”

— Samuel Johnson

494. “Reason elevates our thoughts as high as the stars, and leads us through the vast space of this mighty fabric; yet it comes far short of the real extent of our corporeal being.”

— Samuel Johnson

495. “Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth his having.”

— Samuel Johnson

496. “Each change of many-colour’d life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin’d new.”

— Samuel Johnson

497. “Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil.”

— Samuel Johnson

498. “Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.”

— Samuel Johnson

499. “We suffer equal pain from the pertinacious adhesion of unwelcome images, as from the evanescence of those which are pleasing and useful.”

— Samuel Johnson

500. “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.”

— Samuel Johnson