Quotes by Johnson, Samuel

"Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present."

Johnson, Samuel on flattery   

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

Johnson, Samuel on flattery   

"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."

Johnson, Samuel on flirting   

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

Johnson, Samuel on focus   

"Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor."

Johnson, Samuel on focus   

"A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner."

Johnson, Samuel on food and eating   

"He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else."

Johnson, Samuel on food and eating   

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

Johnson, Samuel on freedom   

"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."

Johnson, Samuel on freedom   

"If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone; one should keep his friendships in constant repair."

Johnson, Samuel on friends and friendship   

"I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance."

Johnson, Samuel on friends and friendship   

"Never, my dear Sir, do you take it into your head that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and my esteem; I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of exemplary piety."

Johnson, Samuel on friends and friendship   

"The endearing elegance of female friendship."

Johnson, Samuel on friends and friendship   

"To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage."

Johnson, Samuel on friends and friendship   

"The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal."

Johnson, Samuel on friends and friendship   

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"The future is purchased by the present."

Johnson, Samuel on the future   

"Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale."

Johnson, Samuel on the future   

"Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good."

Johnson, Samuel on gambling   

"Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child's rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man's whore."

Johnson, Samuel on generations   

"Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze."

Johnson, Samuel on generosity   

"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."

Johnson, Samuel on achievement
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"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome."

Johnson, Samuel on achievement
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"A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk."

Johnson, Samuel on alcohol and alcoholism   

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

Johnson, Samuel on alcohol and alcoholism
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"There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten."

Johnson, Samuel on alcohol and alcoholism   

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

Johnson, Samuel on ambition   

"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."

Johnson, Samuel on ambition   

"Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging."

Johnson, Samuel on america   

"I am willing to love all mankind, except an American."

Johnson, Samuel on america
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"The chief glory of every people arises from its authors."

Johnson, Samuel on glory   

"The Supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things -- the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit."

Johnson, Samuel on evil   

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

Johnson, Samuel on government   

"There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain."

Johnson, Samuel on gratitude   

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

Johnson, Samuel on greatness   

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"No one ever became great by imitation."

Johnson, Samuel on greatness
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"The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little."

Johnson, Samuel on greatness   

"Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it."

Johnson, Samuel on greed   

"While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it."

Johnson, Samuel on grief   

"Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates."

Johnson, Samuel on grief   

"We are inclined to believe those whom we don not know because they have never deceived us."

Johnson, Samuel on gullibility