2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.

The faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are more dangerous, because the influence of his example is more extensive; and the interest of learning requires that they should be discovered and stigmatized, before they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, and become precedents of indisputable authority.

My Dear Sir: Are you playing the same trick again, and trying who can keep silence longest? Remember that all tricks are either knavish or childish; and that it is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend as upon the chastity o

When a man marries a widow his jealousies revert to the past: no man is as good as his wife says her first husband was

No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.

Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place.

Art hath an enemy called ignorance.

We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures

Small debts are like small gun shot; they are rattling around us on all sides and one can scarcely escape being wounded. Large debts are like canons, they produce a loud noise, but are of little danger.