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He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Dr Johnson
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
He that never labors may know the pains of idleness, but not the pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
Those who are in the power of evil habits must conquer them as they can and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be attained: but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by timely caution, preserve their freedom.
Samuel Johnson
An Englishman is content to say nothing when he has nothing to say.
Samuel Johnson
Discord generally operates in little things it is inflamed ... by contrariety of taste oftener than principles.
Samuel Johnson
Read over your compositions and whenever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
Samuel Johnson
It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
Samuel Johnson
There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
Samuel Johnson
Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.
Samuel Johnson
The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercized in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.
Samuel Johnson
The complaint, therefore, that all topicks are preoccupied, is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness, by which some discourage others, and some themselves the mutability of mankind will always furnish writers with new images, and the luxuriance of fancy may always embellish them with new decorations.
Samuel Johnson
Diffidence may check resolution and obstruct performance, but compensates its embarrassments by more important advantages it conciliates the proud, and softens the severe averts envy from excellence, and censure from miscarriage.
Samuel Johnson
The whole of life is but keeping away the thoughts of death.
Samuel Johnson
Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves.
Samuel Johnson
The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species to remark general properties and large appearances.
Samuel Johnson
Luxury, so far as it reaches the people, will do good to the race of people it will strengthen and multiply them. Sir, no nation was ever hurt by luxury for, as I said before it can reach but a very few.
Samuel Johnson
The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.
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
All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.
Samuel Johnson
The size of a man's understanding might always be justly measured by his mirth.
Samuel Johnson
What is the reason that women servants ... have much lower wages than men servants ... when in fact our female house servants work much harder than the male?
Samuel Johnson
