2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

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

Since life itself is uncertain, nothing which has life for its basis can boast much stability.

Example is always more efficacious than precept.

We all live in the hope of pleasing somebody; and the pleasure of pleasing ought to be greatest, and always will be greatest, when our endeavors are exerted in consequence of our duty.

There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other. When speech is employed only as the vehicle of falsehood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave and seek prey only for himself.

This man [Chesterfield], I thought, had been a Lord among wits; but I find he is only a wit among Lords.

That distrust which intrudes so often on your mind is a mode of melancholy, which, if it be the business of a wise man to be happy, it is foolish to indulge; and if it be a duty to preserve our faculties entire for their proper use, it is criminal. Suspicion is very often an useless pain.

No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius.

Read your own compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.