2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Credulity is the common failing of inexperienced virtue; and he who is spontaneously suspicious may justly be charged with radical corruption.

Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.

The majority of a society is the true definition of the public.

Among many parallels which men of imagination have drawn between the natural and moral state of the world, it has been observed that happiness as well as virtue consists in mediocrity.

Change is not made without inconvenience.

Self-love is a busy prompter.

Nature never gives everything at once.

Every cold empirick, when his heart is expanded by a successful experiment, swells into a theorist.

Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use.