2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

I have already enjoyed too much; give me something to desire.

Reason will by degrees submit to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness.

A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge.

Lexicographer. A writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.

The majority have no other reason for their opinions than that they are the fashion.

I look upon this as I did upon the Dictionary: it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.

Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper.

Slander is the revenge of a coward, and dissimulation of his defense.

I have always said the first Whig was the Devil.