Top 500 Samuel Johnson Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Actions are visible, though motives are secret.”

— Samuel Johnson

152. “A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.”

— Samuel Johnson

153. “As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.”

— Samuel Johnson

154. “A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died; it was the triumph of hope over experience.”

— Samuel Johnson

155. “The traveler that resolutely follows a rough and winding path will sooner reach the end of his journey than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hour of daylight in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages.”

— Samuel Johnson

156. “Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.”

— Samuel Johnson

157. “Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.”

— Samuel Johnson

158. “He that voluntarily continues in ignorance, is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces.”

— Samuel Johnson

159. “Lectures were once useful; but now when all can read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary.”

— Samuel Johnson

160. “Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation.”

— Samuel Johnson

161. “He who is extravagant will quickly become poor; and poverty will enforce dependence, and invite corruption.”

— Samuel Johnson

162. “To talk in public, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire and answer inquiries, is the business of the scholar.”

— Samuel Johnson

163. “No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.”

— Samuel Johnson

164. “Study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves.”

— Samuel Johnson

165. “Grammar, which is the art of using words properly, comprises four parts: Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, and Prosody.”

— Samuel Johnson

166. “If misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill-fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced.”

— Samuel Johnson

167. “Such is the emptiness of human enjoyment that we are always impatient of the present. Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust.”

— Samuel Johnson

168. “He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.”

— Samuel Johnson

169. “Let observation with extensive view, Survey mankind from China to Peru; Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife, And watch the busy scenes of crowded life.”

— Samuel Johnson

170. “It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.”

— Samuel Johnson

171. “Language is the dress of thought; and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy.”

— Samuel Johnson

172. “A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity.”

— Samuel Johnson

173. “No knowledge is useless, with the exception of heraldry.”

— Samuel Johnson

174. “No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction. A man is pleased that his wife is dressed as well as other people, and the wife is pleased that she is dressed.”

— Samuel Johnson

175. “Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance.”

— Samuel Johnson

176. “A man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he has both enjoyments.”

— Samuel Johnson

177. “Worth seeing, yes; but not worth going to see.”

— Samuel Johnson

178. “Example is always more efficacious than precept.”

— Samuel Johnson

179. “We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.”

— Samuel Johnson

180. “A book should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it.”

— Samuel Johnson

181. “We never do anything consciously for the last time without sadness of heart.”

— Samuel Johnson

182. “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”

— Samuel Johnson

183. “The finest landscape in the world is improved by a good inn in the foreground.”

— Samuel Johnson

184. “There is no problem the mind of man can set that the mind of man cannot solve.”

— Samuel Johnson

185. “When there is no hope, there can be no endeavor.”

— Samuel Johnson

186. “The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.”

— Samuel Johnson

187. “A second marriage is a triumph of hope over experience.”

— Samuel Johnson

188. “To preserve health is a moral and religious duty, for health is the basis of all social virtues. We can no longer be useful when not well.”

— Samuel Johnson

189. “When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.”

— Samuel Johnson

190. “By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.”

— Samuel Johnson

191. “By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.”

— Samuel Johnson

192. “Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.”

— Samuel Johnson

193. “All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.”

— Samuel Johnson

194. “Lichfield, England. Swallows certainly sleep all winter. A number of them conglobulate together, by flying round and round, and then all in a heap throw themselves under water, and lye in the bed of a river.”

— Samuel Johnson

195. “Nothing concentrates one’s mind so much as the realization that one is going to be hanged in the morning!”

— Samuel Johnson

196. “Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.”

— Samuel Johnson

197. “I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.”

— Samuel Johnson

198. “Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.”

— Samuel Johnson

199. “Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may be properly charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it.”

— Samuel Johnson

200. “He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience. We have always protected the Americans; we may therefore subject them to government.”

— Samuel Johnson