To mean understandings, it is sufficient honour to be numbered amongst the lowest labourers of learning; but different abilities must find different… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
..to write and to live are very different. Many who praise virtue, do no more than praise it. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances; it is often concealed in splendour, and often in extravagance. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
He to whom many objects of pursuit arise at the same time, will frequently hesitate between different desires till a rival has… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
He who sees different ways to the same end, will, unless he watches carefully over his own conduct, lay out too much… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Truth, like beauty, varies its fashions, and is best recommended by different dresses to different minds; and he that recalls the attention… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
When a language begins to teem with books, it is tending to refinement; as those who undertake to teach others must have… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
None but those who have learned the art of subjecting their senses as well as reason to hypothetical systems can be persuaded… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
There is no temper more unpropitious to interest than desultory application and unlimited inquiry, by which the desires are held in a… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Avarice is a uniform and tractable vice; other intellectual distempers are different in different constitutions of mind. That which soothes the pride… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Providence has fixed the limits of human enjoyment by immovable boundaries, and has set different gratifications at such a distance from each… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
He that can swim needs not despair to fly; to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Critics ought never to be consulted, but while errors may yet be rectified or insipidity suppressed. But when the book has once… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Men have been wise in many different modes; but they have always laughed the same way. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
The size of a man's understanding might always be justly measured by his mirth. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
It is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
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 Image
The basis of all excellence is truth: he that professes love ought to feel its power. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
