2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles; do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.

Study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves

He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale.

Plenty is the original cause of many of our needs; and even the poverty, which is so frequent and distressful in civilized nations, proceeds often from that change of manners which opulence has produced. Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries; but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

Politeness is fictitious benevolence. Depend upon it, the want of it never fails to produce something disagreeable to one or other.

Indolence is the devil's cushion.

The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.

The public pleasures of far the greater part of mankind are counterfeit.