Quotes by Samuel Johnson

About Samuel Johnson:

Samuel Johnson 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.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

What is easy is seldom excellent.

Samuel Johnson

Exercise is labor without weariness.

Samuel Johnson

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

Samuel Johnson

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.

Samuel Johnson

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

Samuel Johnson

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.

Samuel Johnson

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

Samuel Johnson

Words are but the signs of ideas.

Samuel Johnson

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.

Samuel Johnson

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.

Samuel Johnson

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

Samuel Johnson

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

Samuel Johnson

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

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

Samuel Johnson

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.

Samuel Johnson

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.

Samuel Johnson

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

Samuel Johnson

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

Samuel Johnson

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

Samuel Johnson

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

Samuel Johnson

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

Samuel Johnson

Author Bio

  • NameSamuel Johnson
  • DescriptionEnglish writer
  • AliasesDr Johnson
  • BornSeptember 18, 1709
  • DiedDecember 13, 1784
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionLexicographer; Linguist; Poet; Literary Historian; Writer; Teacher