Top 500 Samuel Johnson Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “The most Heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.”

— Samuel Johnson

102. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

104. “To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

106. “Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.”

— Samuel Johnson

107. “When speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four.”

— Samuel Johnson

108. “It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.”

— Samuel Johnson

109. “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

— Samuel Johnson

110. “Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured.”

— Samuel Johnson

111. “Books without the knowledge of life are useless.”

— Samuel Johnson

112. “The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.”

— Samuel Johnson

113. “Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.”

— Samuel Johnson

114. “Pleasure itself is not a vice.”

— Samuel Johnson

115. “Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.”

— Samuel Johnson

116. “Poetry cannot be translation.”

— Samuel Johnson

117. “A lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.”

— Samuel Johnson

118. “Each person’s work is always a portrait of himself.”

— Samuel Johnson

119. “Stand Firm for your country, and become a man Honour’d and lov’d: It were a noble life, To be found dead, embracing her.”

— Samuel Johnson

120. “This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.”

— Samuel Johnson

121. “Friendship, peculiar boon of Heaven, The noble mind’s delight and pride, To men and angels only given, To all the lower world denied.”

— Samuel Johnson

122. “The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing.”

— Samuel Johnson

123. “An old friend never can be found, and nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost.”

— Samuel Johnson

124. “There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence.”

— Samuel Johnson

125. “Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter.”

— Samuel Johnson

126. “A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.”

— Samuel Johnson

127. “Consider what importance to society the chastity of women is. Upon that all the property in the world depends. We hang a thief for stealing a sheep; but the unchastity of a woman transfers sheep and farm and all from the right owner.”

— Samuel Johnson

128. “Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.”

— Samuel Johnson

129. “To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.”

— Samuel Johnson

130. “In bed we laugh, in bed we cry, and born in bed, in bed we die; the near approach a bed may show of human bliss to human woe.”

— Samuel Johnson

131. “Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.”

— Samuel Johnson

132. “Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself.”

— Samuel Johnson

133. “If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.”

— Samuel Johnson

134. “We may have many acquaintances, but we can have but few friends; this made Aristotle say that he that hath many friends hath none.”

— Samuel Johnson

135. “Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.”

— Samuel Johnson

136. “Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.”

— Samuel Johnson

137. “All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.”

— Samuel Johnson

138. “Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men.”

— Samuel Johnson

139. “Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.”

— Samuel Johnson

140. “Dishonor waits on perfidy. A man should blush to think a falsehood; it is the crime of cowards.”

— Samuel Johnson

141. “All intellectual improvement arises from leisure.”

— Samuel Johnson

142. “Wine gives great pleasure, and every pleasure is of itself a good. and A man should cultivate his mind so as to have that confidence and readiness without wine, which wine gives.”

— Samuel Johnson

143. “What is easy is seldom excellent.”

— Samuel Johnson

144. “The business of life is to go forward.”

— Samuel Johnson

145. “A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write.”

— Samuel Johnson

146. “Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.”

— Samuel Johnson

147. “A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.”

— Samuel Johnson

148. “A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.”

— Samuel Johnson

149. “It is our first duty to serve society, and after we have done that, we may attend wholly to the salvation of our own souls.”

— Samuel Johnson

150. “Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.”

— Samuel Johnson