2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

Though I love to spend, I hate be cheated, and I found that to build is to be robbed.

As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.

Every man has frequent grievances which only the solicitude of friendship will discover and remedy, and which would remain for ever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it only surveyed by the eye of general benevolence equally attentive to every misery.

Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendor of beneficence.

With regard to the sharpest and most melting sorrow, that which arises from the loss of those whom we have loved with tenderness, it may be observed, that friendship between mortals can be contracted on no other terms than that one must some time mou

A soldier's time is passed in distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption.

Falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and once uttered are sullenly supported.

Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity.