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Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed.
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
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
It is much easier not to write like a man than to write like a woman.
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
If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination.
Samuel Johnson
Advice is seldom welcome. Those who need it most, like it least.
Samuel Johnson
This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.
Samuel Johnson
I would consent to have a limb amputated to recover my spirits
Samuel Johnson
Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
Samuel Johnson
All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.
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
Read the book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read.
Samuel Johnson
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
Samuel Johnson
Sorrow is the mere rust of the soul. Activity will cleanse and brighten it.
Samuel Johnson
Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults.
Samuel Johnson
That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.
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
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
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
We may have uneasy feelings for seeing a creature in distress without pity for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them.
Samuel Johnson
Every man, however hopeless his pretensions may appear, has some project by which he hopes to rise to reputation some art by which he imagines that the attention of the world will be attracted some quality, good or bad, which discriminates him from the common herd of mortals, and by which others may be persuaded to love, or compelled to fear him.
Samuel Johnson
