Top 500 Samuel Johnson Quotes (2024 Update)
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451. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

456. “Exercise is labor without weariness.”

— Samuel Johnson

457. “Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords; but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain.”

— Samuel Johnson

458. “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

459. “Excise: A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

461. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

467. “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

468. “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

469. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

474. “Life protracted is protracted woe.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

477. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

479. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

485. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

487. “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

488. “Mutual cowardice keeps us in peace.”

— Samuel Johnson

489. “The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

491. “A translator is to be like his author; it is not his business to excel him.”

— Samuel Johnson

492. “Invention is almost the only literary labour which blindness cannot obstruct.”

— Samuel Johnson

493. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

495. “Pride is seldom delicate; it will please itself with very mean advantages.”

— Samuel Johnson

496. “As pride sometimes is hid under humility, idleness if often covered by turbulence and hurry.”

— Samuel Johnson

497. “Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.”

— Samuel Johnson

498. “It is a hopeless endeavour to unite the contrarieties of spring and winter; it is unjust to claim the privileges of age, and retain the play-things of childhood.”

— Samuel Johnson

499. “Politeness is fictitious benevolence.”

— Samuel Johnson

500. “No one is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, their fondness for themselves.”

— Samuel Johnson