It would add much to human happiness, if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
A merchant may, perhaps, be a man of an enlarged mind, but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages. — 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
To see helpless infancy stretching out her hands, and pouring out her cries in testimony of dependence, without any powers to alarm… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
In a time of war the nation is always of one mind, eager to hear something good of themselves and ill of… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which one of the Fathers observes to be not a… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
To have the management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Human experience, which is constantly contradicting theory, is the great test of truth. A system, built upon the discoveries of a great… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why;… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
There is not, perhaps, to a mind well instructed, a more painful occurrence, than the death of one we have injured without… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Wine gives great pleasure, and every pleasure is of itself a good. and A man should cultivate his mind so as to… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
As the mind must govern the hands, so in every society the man of intelligence must direct the man of labor. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he must study at Christ Church and All Souls. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes,… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Nothing concentrates one's mind so much as the realization that one is going to be hanged in the morning! — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Foppery is never cured; it is the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, are never rectified; once… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
There is nothing more fatal to a man whose business is to think than to have learned the art of regaling his… — 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
