2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

He that can swim needs not despair to fly; to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is to swim in a subtler. We are only to proportion our power of resistance to the different density of matter through which we are to pass. You will be necessarily upborne by the air if you can renew any impulse upon it faster than the air can recede from the pressure...

You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.

There is a frightful interval between the seed and the timber.

It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination.

A man of sense and education should meet a suitable companion in a wife. It is a miserable thing when the conversation can only be such as whether the mutton should be boiled or roasted, and probably a dispute about that.

Repentance, however difficult to be practiced, is, if it be explained without superstition, easily understood. Repentance is the relinquishment of any practice from the conviction that it has offended God.

Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords; but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain.

To me - the choice of life is become less important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice of eternity.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.