2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim’s Progress?

You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not – silence is the sharper sword.

Poetry cannot be translation.

Wheresoe’er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new: Endless labor all along, Endless labor to be wrong: Phrase that Time has flung away; Uncouth words in disarray, Trick’d in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.

And panting Time toil’d after him in vain.

Each change of many-colour’d life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin’d new.

Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage, Till pitying Nature signs the last release, And bids afflicted worth retire to peace.

We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures.

If the guardian or the mother Tell the woes of willful waste, Scorn their counsel and their pother, You can hang or drown at last.