2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

You cannot give me an instance of any man who is permitted to lay out his own time contriving not to have tedious hours.

Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail.

Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

All to whom want is terrible, upon whatever principle, ought to think themselves obliged to learn the sage maxims of our parsimonious ancestors, and attain the salutary arts of contracting expense; for without economy none can be rich, and with it few can be poor.

As the faculty of writing has chiefly been a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has always been thrown upon the women.

Whatever is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes; the distinctions which set one man so much above another are very little perceived in the gloom of a sick chamber, where it will be vain to expect entertainment from the gay, or instruction from the wise; where all human glory is obliterated, the wit is clouded, the reasoner perplexed, and the hero subdued; where the highest and brightest of mortal beings finds nothing left him but the consciousness of innocence.

If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science.