Top 500 Samuel Johnson Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “We go from anticipation to anticipation, not from satisfaction to satisfaction.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

253. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

257. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

261. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

264. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

267. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

279. “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

280. “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

281. “Wretched un-idea’d girls.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

283. “Apologies are seldom of any use.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

286. “The majority have no other reason for their opinions than that they are the fashion.”

— Samuel Johnson

287. “Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

289. “Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politics, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.”

— Samuel Johnson

290. “A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one; no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down.”

— Samuel Johnson

291. “The drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give. For we that live to please must please to live.”

— Samuel Johnson

292. “Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.”

— Samuel Johnson

293. “The business of the poet, said Imlac, is to examine, not the individual, but the species.”

— Samuel Johnson

294. “Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.”

— Samuel Johnson

295. “Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.”

— Samuel Johnson

296. “Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last.”

— Samuel Johnson

297. “He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.”

— Samuel Johnson

298. “The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.”

— Samuel Johnson

299. “A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapours are to the traveller: he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way and sure to engulf him in the mire.”

— Samuel Johnson

300. “Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter.”

— Samuel Johnson