Top 500 Samuel Johnson Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

205. “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

206. “Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

Featured in: Country Quotes

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

211. “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

212. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

216. “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

217. “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

218. “A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.”

— Samuel Johnson

219. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

227. “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

228. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

Featured in: Country Quotes

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

240. “He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

Featured in: Reading Quotes

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

245. “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

246. “A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.”

— Samuel Johnson

Featured in: Reading Quotes

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson