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Whatever professes to benefit by pleasing must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something sudden and unexpected that which elevates must always surprise.
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
The liberty of using harmless pleasure will not be disputed but it is still to be examined what pleasures are harmless.
Samuel Johnson
To a poet nothing can be useless.
Samuel Johnson
To scatter praise or blame without regard to justice is to destroy the distinction of good and evil. Many have no other test of actions than general opinion and all are so far influenced by a sense of reputation that they are often restrained by fear of reproach, and excited by hope of honour, when other principles have lost their power.
Samuel Johnson
There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.
Samuel Johnson
What signifies protesting so against flattery when a person speaks well of one, it must either be true or false, you know if true, let us rejoice in his good opinion if he lies, it is a proof at least that he loves more to please me, than to sit s
Samuel Johnson
Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence.
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
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
Samuel Johnson
No knowledge is useless, with the exception of heraldry.
Samuel Johnson
Diffidence may check resolution and obstruct performance, but compensates its embarrassments by more important advantages it conciliates the proud, and softens the severe averts envy from excellence, and censure from miscarriage.
Samuel Johnson
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Samuel Johnson
As long as one lives he will have need of repentance.
Samuel Johnson
By writing, you learn to write.
Samuel Johnson
There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse.
Samuel Johnson
Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.
Samuel Johnson
Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest.
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
These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.
Samuel Johnson
A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.
Samuel Johnson
Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves.
Samuel Johnson
