2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men.

Every man that has felt pain knows how little all other comforts can gladden him to whom health is denied. Yet who is there does not sometimes hazard it for the enjoyment of an hour?

How small of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place consigned, Our own felicity we make or find. With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.

Philosophy has often attempted to repress insolence by asserting that all conditions are leveled by death; a position which, however it may defect the happy, will seldom afford much comfort to the wretched.

The man who is asked by an author what he thinks of his work is put to the torture and is not obliged to speak the truth.

Games are good or bad as to their nature; all may be perverted.

Advice is offensive, it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves.

Being married to those sleepy-souled women is just like playing at cards for nothing: no passion is excited and the time is filled up. I do not, however, envy a fellow one of those honeysuckle wives for my part, as they are but creepers at best and commonly destroy the tree they so tenderly cling about.

Gaiety is to good-humor as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance. The one overpowers weak spirits, the other recreates and revives them. Gaiety seldom fails to give some pain; good-humor boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending.