2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

By writing, you learn to write.

They make a rout about universal liberty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty.

Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor.

I do not see, Sir, that it is reasonable for a man to be angry at another, whom a woman has preferred to him; but angry he is, no doubt; and he is loath to be angry at himself.

When the eye or the imagination is struck with an uncommon work, the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was performed

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

Count on it, if a person talks of their misfortune, there is something in it that is not disagreeable to them.

I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.

They who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it.