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Long customs are not easily broken he that attempts to change the course of his own life very often labors in vain and how shall we do that for others, which we are seldom able to do for ourselves.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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Labor
Long
Broken
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Life
Shall
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Customs
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Seldom
Often
Vain
Others
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.
Samuel Johnson
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Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings.
Samuel Johnson
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The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, were exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue.
Samuel Johnson
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A man of sense and education should meet a suitable companion in a wife. It is a miserable thing when the conversation can only be such as whether the mutton should be boiled or roasted, and probably a dispute about that.
Samuel Johnson
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Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation...to die is the fate of man but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.
Samuel Johnson
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Yet reason frowns in war's unequal game, Where wasted nations raise a single name And mortgag'd states their grandsire's wreaths regret, From age to age in everlasting debt Wreaths which at last the dear-bought right convey To rust on medals, or on stones decay.
Samuel Johnson
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He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.
Samuel Johnson
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He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.
Samuel Johnson
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Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious.
Samuel Johnson
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Among the calamities of war may be numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.
Samuel Johnson
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I have adopted the Roman sentiment, that it is more honorable to save a citizen than to kill an enemy.
Samuel Johnson
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Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
Samuel Johnson
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A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.
Samuel Johnson
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Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy, affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly the one completes a villain, the other only finishes a fop.
Samuel Johnson
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You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
Samuel Johnson
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They make a rout about universal liberty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty.
Samuel Johnson
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The equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.
Samuel Johnson
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Jesting, often, only proves a want of intellect.
Samuel Johnson
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How small of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place consigned, Our own felicity we make or find. With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.
Samuel Johnson
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Pleasure itself is not a vice
Samuel Johnson