To use two languages familiarly and without contaminating one by the other, is very difficult; and to use more than two is… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected; and if… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Though the discoveries or acquisitions of man are not always adequate to the expectations of his pride, they are at least sufficient… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
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
It is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Wisdom and virtue are by no means sufficient, without the supplemental laws of good-breeding, to secure freedom from degenerating into rudeness, or… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
A simile, to be perfect, must both illustrate and ennoble the subject; must show it to the understanding in a clearer view,… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
He said that few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forgo the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive how to… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
The good of our present state is merely comparative, and the evil which every man feels will be sufficient to disturb and… — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
The duties of religion, sincerely and regularly performed, will always be sufficient to exalt the meanest and to exercise the highest understanding. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Distance either of time or place is sufficient to reconcile weak minds to wonderful relations. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters. — Samuel Johnson Copy Share Image
Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without… — 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
