Samuel Johnson Quotes and Quotation

NOTE: There are over 1,700 Samuel Johnson quotations at http://www.samueljohnson.com/. The site also includes a biography and timeline, as well as several complete works.

• "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

• "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. III

• "I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read."

• "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."

• "What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure."
  • Source: Johnsonian Miscellanies (ed. G. B. Hill), Vol. II

• "Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language."

• "I do not care to speak ill of any man behind his back, but I believe the gentleman is an attorney."

• "He who praises everybody praises nobody."
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. III

• "No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned...A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company."
  • Source Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. I

• "The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in few words."

• "All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance; it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals. If a man was to compare the single stroke of the pickaxe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and the last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are leveled and oceans bounded by the slender force of human beings."

• "Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."

• "Oats. A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people."

• "Seeing Scotland, Madam, is only seeing a worse England."
  • Source Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. III

• "When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather."

• "Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought; our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks."

• "We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us."

• "The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life."
  • Source: Life of Sir Thomas Browne by Samuel Johnson

• "Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures."
  • Source Rasselas, Ch. 26

• "A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek."
  • Source: Johnsonian Miscellanies (ed. G. B. Hill), Vol. II

• "A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still." (Referring to critics)
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. I

• "Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian... Imagination is not required in any high degree."
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. I

• "Norway, too, has noble wild prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, Sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!"
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. I

• "I am willing to love all mankind, except an American."
  • Source Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. III

• "A Frenchman must be always talking, whether he knows anything of the matter or not; an Englishman is content to say nothing, when he has nothing to say."
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. IV

• "Dublin, though a place much worse than London, is not so bad as Iceland."
  • Source: A Letter to Mrs Christopher Smart, the wife of the poet. Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. IV

• "A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good."
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. I

• "A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. I

• Shakespeare never had six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven, but this does not refute my general assertion.
  • Source Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. II

• "Sherry [ is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature."

• "Were it not for imagination, Sir, a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a Duchess."
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. III

• "A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk."
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. III

• "I have two very cogent reasons for not printing any list of subscribers; - one, that I have lost all the names, - the other, that I have spent all the money." (Referring to subscribers to his Dictionary of the English Language.)
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. IV

• "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."
  • Source Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. IV

• "Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you."
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. IV

• "I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark."
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. IV

• "Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea." (When Maurice Morgann asked him who he considered to be the better poet - Smart or Derrick.)
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. IV

• "Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones." (When Miss Hannah More, the writer, had wondered why Milton could write the epic Paradise Lost but only very poor sonnets.)
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. IV

• "Sir, I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance."
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. IV

• "It will be conquered; I will not capitulate." (Referring to his illness.)
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell), Vol. IV

• "A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing."
  • Source: Tour to the Hebrides (J. Boswell)

• "Come, let me know what it is that makes a Scotchman happy!" (Ordering for himself a glass of whisky.)
  • Source: Tour to the Hebrides (J. Boswell)

• "Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other."
  • Source: Attrib. in Instructions to Young Sportsmen (Hawker)

• "Read over your compositions and, when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out."

• "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." (often misquoted as being hanged in the morning)
  • Source: Life of Johnson (J. Boswell)

Attributed

• "It is insufficiently considered that men more often require to be reminded than informed.

• "Round numbers are always false."

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