2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Few of those who fill the world with books, have any pretensions to the hope either of pleasing or instructing. They have often no other task than to lay two books before them, out of which they compile a third, without any new material of their own, and with very little application of judgment to those which former authors have supplied.

Gloomy calm of idle vacancy.

Scarce any man becomes eminently disagreeable but by a departure from his real character, and an attempt at something for which nature or education has left him unqualified.

Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

1. Turn all care out of your head as soon as you mount the chaise. 2. Do not think about frugality: your health is worth more than it can cost. 3. Do not continue any day's journey to fatigue. 4. Take now and then a day's rest. 5. Get a smart seasickness if you can. 6. Cast away all anxiety, and keep your mind easy. This last direction is the principal; with an unquiet mind neither exercise, nor diet, nor physic can be of much use.

A fallible being will fail somewhere.

Distance either of time or place is sufficient to reconcile weak minds to wonderful relations.

We often look with indifference on the successive parts of something that, if the whole were seen together, would shake us with emotion.