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From all our observations we may collect with certainty, that misery is the lot of man, but cannot discover in what particular condition it will find most alleviations.
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
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
Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.
Samuel Johnson
He who praises everybody, praises nobody.
Samuel Johnson
As any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice.
Samuel Johnson
Wretched un-idea'd girls.
Samuel Johnson
By writing, you learn to write.
Samuel Johnson
A man is not obliged honestly to answer a question which should not properly be put.
Samuel Johnson
Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine that he possesses some qualities superior, either in kind or degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world.
Samuel Johnson
There is no book so poor that it would not be a prodigy if wholly made by a single man.
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
Of those that spin out trifles and die without a memorial, many flatter themselves with high opinions of their own importance, and imagine that they are every day adding some improvement to human life.
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 excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in a few words.
Samuel Johnson
How gloomy would be the mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he should never die: that what now acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall think on forever!
Samuel Johnson
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
Samuel Johnson
When a man feel the reprehension of a friend seconded by his own heart, he is easily heated into resentment.
Samuel Johnson
The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.
Samuel Johnson
A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write.
Samuel Johnson
Reason elevates our thoughts as high as the stars, and leads us through the vast space of this mighty fabric yet it comes far short of the real extent of our corporeal being.
Samuel Johnson
If a man is in doubt whether it would be better for him to expose himself to martyrdom or not, he should not do it. He must be convinced that he has a delegation from heaven.
Samuel Johnson
