Author · English · 1709 – 1784 · 194 quotes
Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.
Samuel Johnson
Author · English · 1709 – 1784
A man will turn over half a library to make one book.
To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.
A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.
Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.
Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.
I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.
He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.
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.
Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.
That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.
He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.
Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.
There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.
If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.
When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.
Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.
Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
My dear friend, clear your mind of can't.
The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.
Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.
A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.
There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.
If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.
Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.
What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.
Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.
We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?
There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.
Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.
