Top 500 Samuel Johnson Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Curiosity, like all other desires, produces pain as well as pleasure.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

253. “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

254. “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

255. “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

256. “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

257. “None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

259. “Truth allows no choice.”

— Samuel Johnson

260. “The process is the reality.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

262. “Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.”

— Samuel Johnson

263. “Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.”

— Samuel Johnson

264. “We go from anticipation to anticipation, not from satisfaction to satisfaction.”

— Samuel Johnson

265. “There are in every age new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.”

— Samuel Johnson

266. “The perfect day for quitting is not real. It will never come, so might as well start today.”

— Samuel Johnson

267. “Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.”

— Samuel Johnson

268. “Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.”

— Samuel Johnson

269. “Life is short. The sooner that a man begins to enjoy his wealth the better.”

— Samuel Johnson

270. “There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse.”

— Samuel Johnson

271. “Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.”

— Samuel Johnson

272. “Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated; and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavors, by showing what has already been performed.”

— Samuel Johnson

273. “A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.”

— Samuel Johnson

274. “That what cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.”

— Samuel Johnson

275. “To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege; to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.”

— Samuel Johnson

276. “A man should be careful never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage. People may be amused at the time, but they will be remembered, and brought out against him upon some subsequent occasion.”

— Samuel Johnson

277. “Among the calamities of war may be numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.”

— Samuel Johnson

278. “It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.”

— Samuel Johnson

279. “Wasting a fortune is evaporation by a thousand imperceptible means.”

— Samuel Johnson

280. “The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety.”

— Samuel Johnson

281. “It is a maxim that no man was ever enslaved by influence while he was fit to be free.”

— Samuel Johnson

282. “Those that have done nothing in life, are not qualified to judge of those that have done little.”

— Samuel Johnson

283. “Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals.”

— Samuel Johnson

284. “Read the book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read.”

— Samuel Johnson

285. “Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay an author.”

— Samuel Johnson

286. “Where there is emulation, there will be vanity; where there is vanity, there will be folly.”

— Samuel Johnson

287. “He who praises everybody, praises nobody.”

— Samuel Johnson

288. “In the motive lies the good or ill.”

— Samuel Johnson

289. “A transition from an author’s book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city.”

— Samuel Johnson

290. “This is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery.”

— Samuel Johnson

291. “Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.”

— Samuel Johnson

292. “Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.”

— Samuel Johnson

293. “Wretched un-idea’d girls.”

— Samuel Johnson

294. “The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy.”

— Samuel Johnson

295. “Apologies are seldom of any use.”

— Samuel Johnson

296. “Unintelligible language is a lantern without a light.”

— Samuel Johnson

297. “He who attempts to do all will waste his life in doing little.”

— Samuel Johnson

298. “He that never thinks can never be wise.”

— Samuel Johnson

299. “Hope is itself a species of happiness, and perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.”

— Samuel Johnson

300. “Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale.”

— Samuel Johnson