2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.

Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter.

A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice.

Words are daughters of earth but ideas are sons of heaven.

The eye of the mind, like that of the body, can only extend its view to new objects, by losing sight of those which are now before it.

Good-humor is a state between gayety and unconcern,--the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another.

The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion.

Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits; the other recreates and revives them.

There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse.