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There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Literary Critic
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
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Able
Sorrow
Usefully
Look
Certainly
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Trace
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Virtuously
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
The roads of science are narrow, so that they who travel them, must wither follow or meet one another.
Samuel Johnson
Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do.
Samuel Johnson
An old friend never can be found, and nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost.
Samuel Johnson
You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.
Samuel Johnson
Those who will not take the trouble to think for themselves, have always somebody that thinks for them and the difficulty in writing is to please those from whom others learn to be pleased.
Samuel Johnson
Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.
Samuel Johnson
In a man's letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.
Samuel Johnson
The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay.
Samuel Johnson
Every man has something to do which he neglects, every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat.
Samuel Johnson
I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
Samuel Johnson
Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.
Samuel Johnson
How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
Samuel Johnson
Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss.
Samuel Johnson
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.
Samuel Johnson
The habit of looking on the bright side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year.
Samuel Johnson
All this [wealth] excludes but one evil, poverty.
Samuel Johnson
It seems to be remarkable that death increases our veneration for the good, and extenuates our hatred for the bad.
Samuel Johnson
Happiness is enjoyed only in proportion as it is known and such is the state or folly of man, that it is known only by experience of its contrary.
Samuel Johnson
There are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame.
Samuel Johnson
Every man's affairs, however little, are important to himself.
Samuel Johnson
