2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured.

An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty.

In Shakespeare's plays, the mourner hastening to bury his friend is all the time colliding with the reveller hastening to his wine.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

It is not possible to be regarded with tenderness, except by a few. That merit which gives greatness and renown diffuses its influence to a wide compass, but acts weakly on every single breast; it is placed at a distance from common spectators, and shines like one of the remote stars, of which the light reaches us, but not the heat.

Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.

He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.

Probably no one will ever know whether it is better to wear a nightcap or not.

To a poet nothing can be useless.