Top 500 Samuel Johnson Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Change is not made without inconvenience.”

— Samuel Johnson

52. “What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.”

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

59. “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

60. “All history was at first oral.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

73. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

75. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

83. “Hell is paved with good intentions.”

— Samuel Johnson

84. “The triumph of hope over experience.”

— Samuel Johnson

85. “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

86. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

90. “It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous.”

— Samuel Johnson

91. “If the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

94. “Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson