147 Quotes By Samuel Johnson


All theory is against freedom of the will all experience for it.
Samuel Johnson on experience

Exercise is labor without weariness.
Samuel Johnson on fitness

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 on food

All theory is against freedom of the will all experience for it.
Samuel Johnson on freedom

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
Samuel Johnson on friendship

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.
Samuel Johnson on friendship

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef love, like being enlivened with champagne.
Samuel Johnson on friendship

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
Samuel Johnson on future

The future is purchased by the present.
Samuel Johnson on future

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

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.
Samuel Johnson on good

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.
Samuel Johnson on good

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 on government

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.
Samuel Johnson on great

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
Samuel Johnson on great

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson on great

To love one that is great, is almost to be great one's self.
Samuel Johnson on great

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
Samuel Johnson on great

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
Samuel Johnson on great

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
Samuel Johnson on great