Top 500 Samuel Johnson Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “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

302. “Apologies are seldom of any use.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

305. “More is learned in a public than in a private school, from emulation. There is the collision of mind with mind, or the radiation of many minds pointing to one center.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

311. “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

312. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

314. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

316. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

320. “Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

322. “The world is not yet exhausted: let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.”

— Samuel Johnson

323. “It may be observed in general that the future is purchased by the present. It is not possible to secure distant or permanent happiness but by the forbearance of some immediate gratification.”

— Samuel Johnson

324. “The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.”

— Samuel Johnson

325. “Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.”

— Samuel Johnson

326. “Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.”

— Samuel Johnson

327. “Gloomy calm of idle vacancy.”

— Samuel Johnson

328. “Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.”

— Samuel Johnson

329. “In Shakespeare’s plays, the mourner hastening to bury his friend is all the time colliding with the reveller hastening to his wine.”

— Samuel Johnson

330. “London! the needy villain’s general home, The common sewer of Paris and of Rome! With eager thirst, by folly or by fate, Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state.”

— Samuel Johnson

331. “Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us.”

— Samuel Johnson

332. “Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?”

— Samuel Johnson

333. “Grief is a species of idleness.”

— Samuel Johnson

334. “The seeds of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in public.”

— Samuel Johnson

335. “Was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim’s Progress?”

— Samuel Johnson

336. “He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.”

— Samuel Johnson

337. “A blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another.”

— Samuel Johnson

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338. “There are charms made only for distant admiration.”

— Samuel Johnson

339. “Smoking is a shocking thing – blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people’s mouths, eyes, and noses, and having the same thing done to us.”

— Samuel Johnson

340. “I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.”

— Samuel Johnson

341. “Some have little power to do good, and have likewise little strength to resist evil.”

— Samuel Johnson

342. “The stream of Time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare.”

— Samuel Johnson

343. “He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.”

— Samuel Johnson

344. “A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.”

— Samuel Johnson

345. “The violence of war admits no distinction; the lance, that is lifted at guilt and power, will sometimes fall on innocence and gentleness.”

— Samuel Johnson

346. “All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.”

— Samuel Johnson

347. “Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.”

— Samuel Johnson

348. “The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.”

— Samuel Johnson

349. “If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.”

— Samuel Johnson

350. “A short letter to a distant friend is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation – a proof of unwillingness to do much, even where there is a necessity of doing something.”

— Samuel Johnson