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A good wife is like the ivy which beautifies the building to which it clings, twining its tendrils more lovingly as time converts the ancient edifice into a ruin.
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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Ivy
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.
Samuel Johnson
The size of a man's understanding might always be justly measured by his mirth.
Samuel Johnson
No man tells his opinion so freely as when he imagines it received with implicit veneration.
Samuel Johnson
Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.
Samuel Johnson
It is the just doom of laziness and gluttony to be inactive without ease and drowsy without tranquility.
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
When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.
Samuel Johnson
We never do anything consciously for the last time without sadness of heart.
Samuel Johnson
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
As a madman is apt to think himself grown suddenly great, so he that grows suddenly great is apt to borrow a little from the madman.
Samuel Johnson
It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.
Samuel Johnson
A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.
Samuel Johnson
In order that all men might be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
Samuel Johnson
The balls of sight are so formed, that one man's eyes are spectacles to another, to read his heart with.
Samuel Johnson
The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside
Samuel Johnson
That observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good.
Samuel Johnson
No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.
Samuel Johnson
The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
Samuel Johnson
It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest. They support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for to-morrow.
Samuel Johnson
Books have always a secret influence on the understanding we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas he that reads books of science, thogh without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing.
Samuel Johnson
