2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired.

In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

[C]ourage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.

Is there such depravity in man as that he should injure another without benefit to himself?

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own, and if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

How gloomy would be these mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he shall never die; that what now acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall think on for ever. Those that lie here stretched before us, the wise and the powerful of ancient times, warn us to remember the shortness of our present state; they were, perhaps, snatched away while they were busy, like us, in the choice of life.

Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.