2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Books, like friends, should be few and well-chosen.

The gratification of curiosity rather frees us from uneasiness, than confers pleasure. We are more pained by ignorance, than delighted by instruction. Curiosity is the thirst of the soul.

Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.

The lust of gold succeeds the rage of conquest. The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless the last corruption of degenerate man.

Get together a hundred or two men, however sensible they may be, and you are very likely to have a mob

This is one of the disadvantages of wine; it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

It's matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination with reality, and instead of thinking of how things may be, see them as they are.

Long hast thou borne the burden of the day, / Thy task is ended, venerable Grey! / No more shall art thy dexterous hand require, / To break the sleep of elemental fire: / To rouse the powers that actuate Nature's frame, / The momentaneous shock, th' electric flame; / The flame, which at first, weak pupil of thy lore, / I saw, condemn'd, alas! to see no more.