Samuel Johnson Quotes

"My dear friend, clear your mind of cant."

"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."

"Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance."

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

"Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged."

"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."

"No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company."

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

"The true art of memory is the art of attention."

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

"What is easy is seldom excellent."

"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome."

"One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts."

"The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken."

"Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."

"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."

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

"When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

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

"Language is the dress of thought."

"Exercise is labor without weariness."

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

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

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

"Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth."

"Words are but the signs of ideas."

"No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring."

"Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity."

"There are charms made only for distant admiration."