2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.

But, perhaps, the flatterer is not often detected; for an honest mind is not apt to suspect, and no one exerts the power of discernment with much vigour when selflove favors the deceit.

Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.

If a man were to go by chance at the same time with Burke under a shed, to shun a shower, he would say - 'this is an extraordinary man.'

Apologies are seldom of any use.

No man tells his opinion so freely as when he imagines it received with implicit veneration.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

Every man's affairs, however little, are important to himself.