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It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.
Samuel Johnson
Sir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is better than admiration, - judgement, to estimate things at their true value.
Samuel Johnson
Small debts are like small shot they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon of loud noise, but little danger.
Samuel Johnson
If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur.
Samuel Johnson
No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance, or to extinguish the desire of fond endearments and tender officiousness and, therefore, no one should think it unnecessary to learn those arts by which friendship may be gained.
Samuel Johnson
He that is pushing his predecessors into the gulf of obscurity, cannot but sometimes suspect, that he must himself sink in like manner, and, as he stands upon the same precipice, be swept away with the same violence.
Samuel Johnson
He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.
Samuel Johnson
When a Man is tried of London, he is tired of life.
Samuel Johnson
He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
Samuel Johnson
Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.
Samuel Johnson
Timidity is a disease of the mind, obstinate and fatal for a man once persuaded that any impediment is insuperable has given it, with respect to himself, that strength and weight which it had not before.
Samuel Johnson
I have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch and tumbling into it
Samuel Johnson
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
Samuel Johnson
Those who attempt nothing themselves think every thing easily performed, and consider the unsuccessful always as criminal.
Samuel Johnson
Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter.
Samuel Johnson
Attack is the reaction. I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds.
Samuel Johnson
Every reader should remember the diffidence of Socrates, and repair by his candour the injuries of time: he should impute the seeming defects of his author to some chasm of intelligence, and suppose that the sense which is now weak was once forcible
Samuel Johnson
Philosophy has often attempted to repress insolence by asserting that all conditions are leveled by death a position which, however it may defect the happy, will seldom afford much comfort to the wretched.
Samuel Johnson
Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.
Samuel Johnson
Learn that the present hour alone is man's.
Samuel Johnson
