Top 500 Samuel Johnson Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.”

— Samuel Johnson

202. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

204. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

206. “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

207. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

214. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

226. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

230. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

239. “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

240. “Curiosity, like all other desires, produces pain as well as pleasure.”

— Samuel Johnson

241. “The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

243. “Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of the spring: no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of the Nile.”

— Samuel Johnson

244. “A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.”

— Samuel Johnson

245. “Truth, such as is necessary to the reputation of life, is always found where it is honestly sought.”

— Samuel Johnson

246. “Many useful and valuable books lie buried in shops and libraries, unknown and unexamined, unless some lucky compiler opens them by chance, and finds an easy spoil of wit and learning.”

— Samuel Johnson

247. “To forget, or pretend to do so, to return a borrowed article, is the meanest sort of petty theft.”

— Samuel Johnson

248. “The process is the reality.”

— Samuel Johnson

249. “Truth allows no choice.”

— Samuel Johnson

250. “Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o’clock is a scoundrel.”

— Samuel Johnson