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It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Bookseller
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Age
Use
Mind
Men
Torpid
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Grows
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.
Samuel Johnson
Golf is a game in which you claim the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood.
Samuel Johnson
When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.
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Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.
Samuel Johnson
The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercized in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.
Samuel Johnson
The future is bought with the present.
Samuel Johnson
We ought not to raise expectations which it is not in our power to satisfy.-It is more pleasing to see smoke brightening into flame, than flame sinking into smoke.
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
A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.
Samuel Johnson
Sir, there is no end of negative criticism.
Samuel Johnson
Misery is caused for the most part, not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the corrosion of less visible evils, which canker enjoyment, and undermine security. The visit of an invader is necessarily rare, but domestic animosities allow no cessation.
Samuel Johnson
I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning, for that is sure good. I would let him at first read any English book which happens to engage his attention because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He'll get better books afterwards.
Samuel Johnson
As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.
Samuel Johnson
It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy unenvied, to be healthful without physic, and secure without a guard to obtain from the bounty of nature, what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of artists and attendants, of flatterers and spies.
Samuel Johnson
Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.
Samuel Johnson
Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
Samuel Johnson
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
I remember very well, when I was at Oxford, an old gentleman said to me, Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowledge for when years come upon you, you will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome task.
Samuel Johnson
The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.
Samuel Johnson
What is good only because it pleases cannot be pronounced good till it has been found to please.
Samuel Johnson
