Top 500 Samuel Johnson Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

404. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

406. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

408. “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

409. “Avarice is always poor.”

— Samuel Johnson

410. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— 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. “To build is to be robbed.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

420. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

423. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

425. “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

426. “He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

430. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

433. “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

434. “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

435. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

440. “A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

442. “There ambush here relentless ruffians lay, And here the fell attorney prowls for prey.”

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

445. “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

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

— Samuel Johnson

448. “There is less flogging in our great schools than formerly-but then less is learned there; so what the boys get at one end they lose at the other.”

— Samuel Johnson

449. “He endearing elegance of female friendship.”

— Samuel Johnson

450. “Officious, innocent, sincere, Of every friendless name the friend.”

— Samuel Johnson