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As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles.
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
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable.
Samuel Johnson
Of all the griefs that harass the distress'd, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart, Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart.
Samuel Johnson
Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits the other recreates and revives them.
Samuel Johnson
A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.
Samuel Johnson
Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.
Samuel Johnson
Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss.
Samuel Johnson
Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it
Samuel Johnson
I wish you would add an index rerum, that when the reader recollects any incident he may easily find it.
Samuel Johnson
Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty, and of ease, and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health.
Samuel Johnson
Our aspirations are our possibilities.
Samuel Johnson
We often need reminding even if we do not often need educating.
Samuel Johnson
I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
Samuel Johnson
He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar and many fold in their passage while they lie waiting for the gale.
Samuel Johnson
Life protracted is protracted woe.
Samuel Johnson
Attainment is followed by neglect, possession by disgust, and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to many another course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last
Samuel Johnson
No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library for who can see the wall crowded on every side by mighty volumes, the works of laborious meditations and accurate inquiry, now scarcely known but by the catalogue.
Samuel Johnson
Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate inquiry whether it is right.
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
In all pleasures hope is a considerable part.
Samuel Johnson
Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he must study at Christ Church and All Souls.
Samuel Johnson
