2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

The arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration.

Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.

The uncertainty of death is, in effect, the great support of the whole system of life.

So scanty is our present allowance of happiness that in many situations life could scarcely be supported if hope were not allowed to relieve the present hour by pleasures borrowed from the future.

He who fails to please in his salutation and address is at once rejected, and never obtains an opportunity of showing his latest excellences or essential qualities.

It is necessary to the success of flattery, that it be accommodated to particular circumstances or characters, and enter the heart on that side where the passions are ready to receive it.

It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called, by the generality of mankind, a particular genius.

To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which if not a virtue, is the groundwork of a virtue.

Affectation is to be always distinguished from hypocrisy as being the art of counterfeiting those qualities, which we might with innocence and safety, be known to want. Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy; affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly.