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We may have many acquaintances, but we can have but few friends this made Aristotle say that he that hath many friends hath none.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
Teacher
Translator
Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
None
Friends
May
Many
Made
Acquaintances
Aristotle
Acquaintance
Hath

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He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed. The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich.
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Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim and when you are calculating, calculate.
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When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.
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It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous.
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It was the maxim, I think, of Alphonsus of Aragon, that dead counsellors are safest. The grave puts an end to flattery and artifice, and the information we receive from books is pure from interest, fear, and ambition. Dead counsellors are likewise most instructive, because they are heard with patience and with reverence.
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What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.
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The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another and each labors first to impose upon himself and then to propagate the imposture.
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The dependant who cultivates delicacy in himself very little consults his own tranquillity.
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There are occasions on which all apology is rudeness.
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A vow is a snare for sin
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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.
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A person loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal.
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No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.
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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.
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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?
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Present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.
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Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.
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Suspicion is very often a useless pain.
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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.
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The present time is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
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