2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

In proportion as our cares are employed upon the future, they are abstracted from the present, from the only time which we can call our own, and of which, if we neglect the apparent duties to make provision against visionary attacks, we shall certainly counteract our own purpose.

Suspicion is very often a useless pain.

A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died; it was the triumph of hope over experience.

Unintelligible language is a lantern without a light.

Advice, as it always gives a temporary appearance of superiority, can never be very grateful, even when it is most necessary or most judicious. But for the same reason everyone is eager to instruct his neighbours. To be wise or to be virtuous is to buy dignity and importance at a high price; but when nothing is necessary to elevation but detection of the follies or faults of others, no man is so insensible to the voice of fame as to linger on the ground.

The triumph of hope over experience.

When a poet mentions the spring, we know that the zephyrs are about to whisper, that the groves are to recover their verdure, the linnets to warble forth their notes of love, and the flocks and herds to frisk over vales painted with flowers: yet, who is there so insensible of the beauties of nature, so little delighted with the renovation of the world, as not to feel his heart bound at the mention of the spring?

Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea.

I am a friend to subordination, as most conducive to the happiness of society. There is a reciprocal pleasure in governing and being governed.