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He that never labors may know the pains of idleness, but not the pleasures.
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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Labor
Pleasure
Pain
May
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Never
Relaxation
Pains
Idleness
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
The hostility perpetually exercised between one man and another, is caused by the desire of many for that which only few can possess. Every man would be rich, powerful, and famous yet fame, power, and riches, are only the names of relative conditions, which imply the obscurity, dependence, and poverty of greater numbers.
Samuel Johnson
Shakespeare never had six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven, but this does not refute my general assertion.
Samuel Johnson
Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.
Samuel Johnson
Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain.
Samuel Johnson
The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.
Samuel Johnson
Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.
Samuel Johnson
Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults.
Samuel Johnson
Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he must study at Christ Church and All Souls.
Samuel Johnson
No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.... There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.
Samuel Johnson
Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.
Samuel Johnson
The process is the reality.
Samuel Johnson
I soon found that wit, like every other power, has its boundaries that its success depends upon the aptitude of others to receive impressions and that as some bodies, indissoluble by heat, can set the furnace and crucible at defiance, there are min
Samuel Johnson
Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.
Samuel Johnson
It is not possible to be regarded with tenderness, except by a few. That merit which gives greatness and renown diffuses its influence to a wide compass, but acts weakly on every single breast it is placed at a distance from common spectators, and shines like one of the remote stars, of which the light reaches us, but not the heat.
Samuel Johnson
That man is never happy for the present is so true, that all his relief from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little while. Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
Samuel Johnson
Why, sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, Sir, is not in Nature.
Samuel Johnson
No wonder, Sir, that he is vain a man who is perpetually flattered in every mode that can be conceived. So many bellows have blown the fire, that one wonders he is not by this time become a cinder.
Samuel Johnson
Trust as little as you can to report, and examine all you can by your own senses.
Samuel Johnson
The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy their real faults are immediately detected and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an individual weight of calumny will be super-added.
Samuel Johnson
The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another.
Samuel Johnson
