2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

There are few so free from vanity as not to dictate to those who will hear their instructions with a visible sense of their own beneficence.

A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse, not a remarkable mathematician.

There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.

The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence.

Pope had been flattered till he thought himself one of the moving powers of the system of life. When he talked of laying down his pen, those who sat round him intreated and implored; and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they went away and laughed.

If what appears little be universally despised, nothing greater can be attained; for all that is great was at first little, and rose to its present bulk by gradual accessions and accumulated labours

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without very accurate inquiry whether it is right. It is sufficient that another is growing great in his own eyes at our expense, and assumes authority over us without our permission; for many would contentedly suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, rather than the insolence of him who triumphs as their deliverer.