2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

I respect Millar: he has raised the price of literature

Do it now. You become successful the moment you start moving toward a worthwhile goal.

None but those who have learned the art of subjecting their senses as well as reason to hypothetical systems can be persuaded by the most specious rhetorician that the lots of life are equal; yet it cannot be denied that every one has his peculiar pleasures and vexations, that external accidents operate variously upon different minds, and that no man can exactly judge from his own sensations what another would feel in the same circumstances.

You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.

You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompense of their labor, than when you give money merely in charity.

Pain and disease awaken us to convictions which are necessary to our moral condition.

Men become friends by a community of pleasures.

To fix the thoughts by writing, and subject them to frequent examinations and reviews, is the best method of enabling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practices on others

Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.