Top 500 Samuel Johnson Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

403. “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

404. “We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

406. “Friendship is not always the sequel of obligation...”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

408. “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

Featured in: Strong Quotes

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

— Samuel Johnson

410. “There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.”

— Samuel Johnson

411. “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

412. “Whisky making is the art of making poison pleasant.”

— Samuel Johnson

413. “Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.”

— Samuel Johnson

414. “Avarice is always poor.”

— Samuel Johnson

415. “When a man marries a widow his jealousies revert to the past: no man is as good as his wife says her first husband was.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

417. “Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage, Till pitying Nature signs the last release, And bids afflicted worth retire to peace.”

— Samuel Johnson

418. “We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

421. “An exotic and irrational entertainment, which has been always combated, and always has prevailed.”

— Samuel Johnson

422. “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

Featured in: Reading Quotes

423. “To build is to be robbed.”

— Samuel Johnson

424. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

426. “Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.”

— Samuel Johnson

427. “The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.”

— Samuel Johnson

428. “Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.”

— Samuel Johnson

429. “An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature.”

— Samuel Johnson

430. “No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred animadversion, than the negligence with which men overlook their own faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them, however frequently repeated.”

— Samuel Johnson

431. “He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.”

— Samuel Johnson

432. “It is the just doom of laziness and gluttony to be inactive without ease and drowsy without tranquility.”

— Samuel Johnson

433. “If in an actor there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid languor, a torpid apathy, the greatest kindness that can be shown him is a speedy sentence of expulsion.”

— Samuel Johnson

434. “In solitude we have our dreams to ourselves, and in company we agree to dream in concert.”

— Samuel Johnson

435. “Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.”

— Samuel Johnson

436. “Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible.”

— Samuel Johnson

437. “Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.”

— Samuel Johnson

438. “I have all my life long been lying in bed till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good.”

— Samuel Johnson

439. “Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself.”

— Samuel Johnson

440. “Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world.”

— Samuel Johnson

441. “A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed.”

— Samuel Johnson

442. “A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.”

— Samuel Johnson

443. “Sir, there is no end of negative criticism.”

— Samuel Johnson

444. “Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea?”

— Samuel Johnson

445. “The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.”

— Samuel Johnson

446. “Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords; but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain.”

— Samuel Johnson

447. “Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity.”

— Samuel Johnson

448. “A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.”

— Samuel Johnson

449. “If the guardian or the mother Tell the woes of willful waste, Scorn their counsel and their pother, You can hang or drown at last.”

— Samuel Johnson

450. “Exercise is labor without weariness.”

— Samuel Johnson