Top 500 Samuel Johnson Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 2 of 10

51. “Change is not made without inconvenience.”

— Samuel Johnson

52. “You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not – silence is the sharper sword.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

54. “I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.”

— Samuel Johnson

55. “All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.”

— Samuel Johnson

56. “Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favorable to virtue. Remember that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad.”

— Samuel Johnson

57. “Women have two weapons – cosmetics and tears.”

— Samuel Johnson

58. “New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.”

— Samuel Johnson

59. “All history was at first oral.”

— Samuel Johnson

60. “Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.”

— Samuel Johnson

61. “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

62. “Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.”

— Samuel Johnson

63. “Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.”

— Samuel Johnson

64. “It is better to live rich than to die rich.”

— Samuel Johnson

65. “I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.”

— Samuel Johnson

66. “Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.”

— Samuel Johnson

67. “Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal.”

— Samuel Johnson

68. “It is commonly a weak man who marries for love.”

— Samuel Johnson

69. “Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.”

— Samuel Johnson

70. “Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.”

— Samuel Johnson

71. “Catch, then, oh! catch the transient hour, Improve each moment as it flies; Life’s a short summer-man a flower; He dies-alas! how soon he dies!”

— Samuel Johnson

72. “The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence.”

— Samuel Johnson

73. “If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.”

— Samuel Johnson

74. “Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.”

— Samuel Johnson

75. “He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.”

— Samuel Johnson

76. “In traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.”

— Samuel Johnson

77. “Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.”

— Samuel Johnson

78. “Hell is paved with good intentions.”

— Samuel Johnson

79. “A man will turn over half a library to make one book.”

— Samuel Johnson

80. “The triumph of hope over experience.”

— Samuel Johnson

81. “There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.”

— Samuel Johnson

82. “No man was ever great by imitation.”

— Samuel Johnson

83. “If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.”

— Samuel Johnson

84. “No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.”

— Samuel Johnson

85. “When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.”

— Samuel Johnson

86. “Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail.”

— Samuel Johnson

87. “Life, however short, is made still shorter by waste of time.”

— Samuel Johnson

88. “That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.”

— Samuel Johnson

89. “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”

— Samuel Johnson

90. “The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.”

— Samuel Johnson

91. “I have always said the first Whig was the Devil.”

— Samuel Johnson

92. “It is incident to physicians, I am afraid, beyond all other men, to mistake subsequence for consequence.”

— Samuel Johnson

93. “Oats. A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”

— Samuel Johnson

94. “Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.”

— Samuel Johnson

95. “Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own.”

— Samuel Johnson

96. “Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.”

— Samuel Johnson

97. “Getting money is not all a man’s business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.”

— Samuel Johnson

98. “It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.”

— Samuel Johnson

99. “Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.”

— Samuel Johnson

100. “At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.”

— Samuel Johnson