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“Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.”
Samuel Johnson
“A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.”
Samuel Johnson
“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.”
Samuel Johnson
“All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.”
Samuel Johnson
“You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.”
Samuel Johnson
“There are charms made only for distant admiration.”
Samuel Johnson
“Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.”
Samuel Johnson
“Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.”
Samuel Johnson
“Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.”
Samuel Johnson
“You can't be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who's for you and who's against you.”
Samuel Johnson
“Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.”
Samuel Johnson
“It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.”
Samuel Johnson
“Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”
Samuel Johnson
“The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.”
Samuel Johnson
“There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.”
Samuel Johnson
“Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.”
Samuel Johnson
“It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.”
Samuel Johnson
“Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.”
Samuel Johnson
“If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.”
Samuel Johnson
“Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.”
Samuel Johnson
“The future is purchased by the present.”
Samuel Johnson
“Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.”
Samuel Johnson
“What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.”
Samuel Johnson
“He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.”
Samuel Johnson
“It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.”
Samuel Johnson
“The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.”
Samuel Johnson
“I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.”
Samuel Johnson
“If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?”
Samuel Johnson
“Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.”
Samuel Johnson
“I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.”
Samuel Johnson
