2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

The synonyme of usury is ruin.

The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside

Never mind the use--do it!

So willing is every man to flatter himself, that the difference between approving laws, and obeying them, is frequently forgotten; he that acknowledges the obligations of morality and pleases his vanity with enforcing them to others, concludes himself zealous in the cause of virtue.

Catch, then, oh! catch the transient hour, Improve each moment as it flies; Life's a short summer-man a flower; He dies-alas! how soon he dies!

Providence has fixed the limits of human enjoyment by immovable boundaries, and has set different gratifications at such a distance from each other, that no art or power can bring them together. This great law it is the business of every rational being to understand, that life may not pass away in an attempt to make contradictions consistent, to combine opposite qualities, and to unite things which the nature of their being must always keep asunder.

There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself.

It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.