Samuel Johnson Quotes

1347 quotes in 8644 categories

• Your aspirations are your possibilities.
• It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity;…
• The violence of war admits no distinction; the lance, that is lifted at guilt and power, will sometimes fall on innocence and gentleness.
• Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.
• To a people warlike and indigent, an incursion into a rich country is never hurtful.
• The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.
• Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured.
• The certainty that life cannot be long, and the probability that it will be much shorter than nature allows, ought to awaken every man to…
• Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.
• Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world.
• The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
• He who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectation, or has any other effect than that of producing a…
• The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment.
• The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things-the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and…
• That all who are happy are equally happy is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. A…
• Worth seeing, yes; but not worth going to see.
• There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence.
• Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
• Whatever you have spend less.
• What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it; for folly doesn't deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect.

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