2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

No man can perform so little as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitude that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful.

Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.

Where there is no difficulty there is no praise.

Pride is seldom delicate, it will please itself with very mean advantages; and envy feels not its own happiness, but when it may be compared with the misery of others

Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth his having.

Christianity is the highest perfection of humanity.

We are inclined to believe those whom we don not know because they have never deceived us.

No writer can be fully convicted of imitation except there is a concurrence of more resemblance than can be imagined to have happened by chance; as where the same ideas are conjoined without any natural series or necessary coherence, or where not only the thought but the words are copied.

Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from learning to be wise. There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,- Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.