Johnson, Samuel Quotes

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

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.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Small debts are like small gun shot; they are rattling around us on all sides and one can scarcely escape being wounded. Large debts are like canons, they produce a loud noise, but are of little danger.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

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

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

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

They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.

Exercise is labor without weariness.

In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.

His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.

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

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

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

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil; but its duty, like that of other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it. It should not be suffered to tyrannize.

Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.

He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds; but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.