2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused

When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.

The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.

Spite and ill-nature are among the most expensive luxuries in life.

A married man has many cares, but a bachelor no pleasures.

It is almost always the unhappiness of a victorious disputant to destroy his own authority by claiming too many consequences, or diffusing his proposition to an indefensible extent.

He who sees different ways to the same end, will, unless he watches carefully over his own conduct, lay out too much of his attention upon the comparison of probabilities and the adjustment of expedients, and pause in the choice of his road, till some accident intercepts his journey.

There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance.

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.