I am a great friend to public amusements; for they keep people from vice. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Read over your compositions and whenever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
An exotic and irrational entertainment, which has been always combated, and always has prevailed. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
He that would travel for the entertainment of others should remember that the great object of remark is human life. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning, for that is sure good. I would let him at first… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
He that would travel for the entertainment of others, should remember that the great object of remark is human life. Every nation… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
All discourse of which others cannot partake is not only an irksome usurpation of the time devoted to pleasure and entertainment, but,… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Disease generally begins that equality which death completes; the distinctions which set one man so much above another are very little perceived… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
The size of a man's understanding might always be justly measured by his mirth. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share
Pound St. Paul's Church into atoms, and consider any single atom; it is to be sure, good for nothing; but put all these atoms… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share
If our aim is to praise, we should forget to criticize; if our aim is to criticize, we should remember to praise — Samuel Johnson Copy Share
It is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share
Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share
The basis of all excellence is truth: he that professes love ought to feel its power. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share
“The composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelting… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share
“The cherubim were never intended as an object of worship, because they were only the appendices to another thing. But a thing is then… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share
Nobody has the right to put another under such a difficulty that he must either hurt the person by telling the truth or hurt… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share
That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own self-esteem — Samuel Johnson Copy Share
The time will come to every human being when it must be known how well he can bear to die. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share
