2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed.

Good sense alone is a sedate and quiescent quality, which manages its possessions well, but does not increase them; it collects few materials for its own operations, and preserves safety, but never gains supremacy.

Of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished.

It is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. You may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learned them both.

The prosperity of a people is proportionate to the number of hands and minds usefully employed. To the community, sedition is a fever, corruption is a gangrene, and idleness is an atrophy. Whatever body or society wastes more than it acquires, must gradually decay, and every being that continues to be fed, and eases to labor, takes away something from the public stock.

I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to he right.

A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries.

Fears of the brave and follies of the wise.

Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.