Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Samuel Johnson Author

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: England
  • Born: Sep 18, 1709
  • Died: Dec 13, 1784

Samuel Johnson, often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican and committed Tory, and has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is also the subject of "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature": James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.

Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, Johnson attended Pembroke College, Oxford for just over a year, before his lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher he moved to London, where he began to write for The Gentleman's Magazine. His early works include the biography The Life of Richard Savage, the poems "London" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes", and the play Irene.

After nine years of work, Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755. It had a far-reaching effect on Modern English and has been described as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship". This work brought Johnson popularity and success.

Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.

To keep your secret is wisdom but to expect others to keep it is folly.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

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

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

Exercise is labor without weariness.

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

No man was ever great by imitation.

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.

To love one that is great, is almost to be great one's self.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

The world is seldom what it seems to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

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

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef love, like being enlivened with champagne.

All theory is against freedom of the will all experience for it.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

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

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

You can't be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who's for you and who's against you.

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.

The future is purchased by the present.

The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

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

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

Your manuscript is both good and original but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

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