2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

The most useful truths are always universal, and unconnected with accidents and customs.

To exact of every man who writes that he should say something new, would be to reduce authors to a small number; to oblige the most fertile genius to say only what is new, would be to contract his volumes to a few pages. Yet, surely, there ought to be some bounds to repetition; libraries ought no more to be heaped for ever with the same thoughts differently expressed, than with the same books differently decorated.

Wickedness is always easier than virtue, for it takes a short cut to everything.

Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it.

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking

All industry must be excited by hope.

Pain is less subject than pleasure to careless expression.

The complaint, therefore, that all topicks are preoccupied, is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness, by which some discourage others, and some themselves; the mutability of mankind will always furnish writers with new images, and the luxuriance of fancy may always embellish them with new decorations.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o clock is a scoundrel.