Top 500 Samuel Johnson Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.”

— Samuel Johnson

202. “Friendship may well deserve the sacrifice of pleasure, though not of conscience.”

— Samuel Johnson

203. “You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument.”

— Samuel Johnson

204. “Sir, when you have seen one green field, you have seen all green fields. Let us walk down Cheapside.”

— Samuel Johnson

205. “Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.”

— Samuel Johnson

206. “Don’t tell me of deception; a lie is a lie, whether it be a lie to the eye or a lie to the ear.”

— Samuel Johnson

207. “Wheresoe’er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new: Endless labor all along, Endless labor to be wrong: Phrase that Time has flung away; Uncouth words in disarray, Trick’d in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.”

— Samuel Johnson

208. “He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.”

— Samuel Johnson

209. “Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. he whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.”

— Samuel Johnson

210. “I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.”

— Samuel Johnson

211. “Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.”

— Samuel Johnson

212. “From Bard, to Bard, the frigid Caution crept, Till Declamation roar’d, while Passion slept.”

— Samuel Johnson

213. “Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.”

— Samuel Johnson

214. “Learn that the present hour alone is man’s.”

— Samuel Johnson

215. “Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings; let us be therefore cautious of how we strip her.”

— Samuel Johnson

216. “Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.”

— Samuel Johnson

217. “Words are daughters of earth but ideas are sons of heaven.”

— Samuel Johnson

218. “Life of Ages, richly poured, Love of God unspent and free, Flowing in the Prophet’s word And the People’s liberty! Never was to chosen race That unstinted tide confined; Thine is every time and place, Fountain sweet of heart and mind!”

— Samuel Johnson

219. “By writing, you learn to write.”

— Samuel Johnson

220. “The great source of pleasure is variety.”

— Samuel Johnson

221. “In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness – inspissated gloom.”

— Samuel Johnson

222. “Self-love is often rather arrogant than blind; it does not hide our faults from ourselves, but persuades us that they escape the notice of others.”

— Samuel Johnson

223. “Some people wave their dogmatic thinking until their own reason is entangled.”

— Samuel Johnson

224. “What I gained by being in France was learning to be better satisfied with my own country.”

— Samuel Johnson

225. “In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much owing to the good opinion of mankind.”

— Samuel Johnson

226. “The size of a man’s understanding can be justly measured by his mirth.”

— Samuel Johnson

227. “The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.”

— Samuel Johnson

228. “The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights.”

— Samuel Johnson

229. “To do nothing is in everyone’s power.”

— Samuel Johnson

230. “Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.”

— Samuel Johnson

231. “Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.”

— Samuel Johnson

232. “Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.”

— Samuel Johnson

233. “John Wesley’s conversation is good, but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have his talk out as I do.”

— Samuel Johnson

234. “I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.”

— Samuel Johnson

235. “A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.”

— Samuel Johnson

236. “All envy would be extinguished, if it were universally known that there are none to be envied.”

— Samuel Johnson

237. “Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.”

— Samuel Johnson

238. “While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.”

— Samuel Johnson

239. “Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.”

— Samuel Johnson

240. “Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss.”

— Samuel Johnson

241. “There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow.”

— Samuel Johnson

242. “By forbearing to do what may innocently be done, we may add hourly new vigor to resolution.”

— Samuel Johnson

243. “The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay.”

— Samuel Johnson

244. “A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, And touched nothing that he did not adorn.”

— Samuel Johnson

245. “Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.”

— Samuel Johnson

246. “Prosperity’s right hand is industry and her left hand is frugality.”

— Samuel Johnson

247. “No mind is much employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments.”

— Samuel Johnson

248. “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

249. “Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.”

— Samuel Johnson

250. “Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.”

— Samuel Johnson