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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

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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
Great Moralist
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Aphorisms

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
Samuel Johnson
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Of riches it is not necessary to write the praise. Let it, however, be remembered that he who has money to spare has it always in his power to benefit others, and of such power a good man must always be desirous.
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Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.
Samuel Johnson
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As the faculty of writing has chiefly been a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has always been thrown upon the women.
Samuel Johnson
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The poor and the busy have no leisure for sentimental sorrow.
Samuel Johnson
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Wise married women don't trouble themselves about infidelity in their husbands.
Samuel Johnson
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The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
Samuel Johnson
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The roads of science are narrow, so that they who travel them, must wither follow or meet one another.
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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The disturbers of our happiness, in this world, are our desires, our griefs, and our fears.
Samuel Johnson
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Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.
Samuel Johnson
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The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
Samuel Johnson
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Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly placed within our reach.
Samuel Johnson
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Spite and ill-nature are among the most expensive luxuries in life.
Samuel Johnson
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Truth has no gradations nothing which admits of increase can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange. But if a proposition be true, there can be none more true.
Samuel Johnson
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Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.
Samuel Johnson
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But to the particular species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and emulation.
Samuel Johnson
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One of the amusements of idleness is reading without fatigue of close attention and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read.
Samuel Johnson
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Pension: An allowance made to anyone without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.
Samuel Johnson
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Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger at his death.
Samuel Johnson