Top 500 Samuel Johnson Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “To a people warlike and indigent, an incursion into a rich country is never hurtful.”

— Samuel Johnson

352. “Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, roll darkly down the torrent of his fate.”

— Samuel Johnson

353. “Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.”

— Samuel Johnson

354. “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

355. “Attainment is followed by neglect, possession by disgust, and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to many another course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

357. “Levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.”

— Samuel Johnson

358. “Advice is seldom welcome. Those who need it most, like it least.”

— Samuel Johnson

359. “Sir, they are a race of convicts and ought to be grateful for anything we allow them short of hanging.”

— Samuel Johnson

360. “Slavery is now nowhere more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.”

— Samuel Johnson

361. “The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.”

— Samuel Johnson

362. “No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.”

— Samuel Johnson

363. “The expense is damnable, the position is ridiculous, and the pleasure fleeting.”

— Samuel Johnson

364. “Greece appears to be the fountain of knowledge; Rome of elegance.”

— Samuel Johnson

365. “That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments...”

— Samuel Johnson

366. “Beauty, without kindness, dies unenjoyed and undelighting.”

— Samuel Johnson

367. “Club: An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions.”

— Samuel Johnson

368. “Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don’t let him go to the devil, where he is known.”

— Samuel Johnson

369. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

371. “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

372. “The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers.”

— Samuel Johnson

373. “Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.”

— Samuel Johnson

374. “Turn on the prudent ant thy heedful eyes. Observe her labors, sluggard, and be wise.”

— Samuel Johnson

375. “Friendship is seldom lasting but between equals, or where the superiority on one side is reduced by some equivalent advantage on the other.”

— Samuel Johnson

376. “It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm.”

— Samuel Johnson

377. “Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.”

— Samuel Johnson

378. “He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dulness in others.”

— Samuel Johnson

379. “As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.”

— Samuel Johnson

380. “In life’s last scene what prodigies surprise, Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise! From Marlborough’s eyes the streams of dotage flow, And Swift expires a driveller and a show.”

— Samuel Johnson

381. “Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.”

— Samuel Johnson

382. “Wise married women don’t trouble themselves about infidelity in their husbands.”

— Samuel Johnson

383. “We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.”

— Samuel Johnson

384. “To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.”

— Samuel Johnson

385. “Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind, but in one composition.”

— Samuel Johnson

386. “Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge, and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things, when they are shown their form or told their use.”

— Samuel Johnson

387. “When first the college rolls receive his name, The young enthusiast quilts his ease for fame; Through all his veins the fever of renown Burns from the strong contagion of the gown.”

— Samuel Johnson

388. “Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.”

— Samuel Johnson

389. “A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.”

— Samuel Johnson

390. “I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.”

— Samuel Johnson

391. “All censure of a man’s self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare.”

— Samuel Johnson

392. “Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, the midnight murderer bursts the faithless bar; invades the sacred hour of silent rest and leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast.”

— Samuel Johnson

393. “Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.”

— Samuel Johnson

394. “He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.”

— Samuel Johnson

395. “The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied.”

— Samuel Johnson

396. “Fate wings, with every wish, the afflictive dart, Each gift of nature, and each grace of art.”

— Samuel Johnson

397. “Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic.”

— Samuel Johnson

398. “Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument.”

— Samuel Johnson

399. “Avarice is always poor.”

— Samuel Johnson

400. “Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation.”

— Samuel Johnson