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Samuel Johnson

83 quotes

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) was an English writer and literary critic who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, playwright, essayist, and the creator of *A Dictionary of the English Language*. Known as "Dr. Johnson," his wit, wisdom, and larger-than-life personality made him one of the most quoted Englishmen of all time.

“All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.”

— Samuel Johnson

Travel

All Quotes by Samuel Johnson

“Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.”

— Samuel Johnson

Great

“Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.”

— Samuel Johnson

Art

“Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.”

— Samuel Johnson

Alone

“All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.”

— Samuel Johnson

Travel

“No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”

— Samuel Johnson

Money

“Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.”

— Samuel Johnson

Business

“Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.”

— Samuel Johnson

Death

“Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.”

— Samuel Johnson

Design

“It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.”

— Samuel Johnson

Beauty

“Your manuscript is both good and original but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.”

— Samuel Johnson

Good

“Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.”

— Samuel Johnson

Power

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”

— Samuel Johnson

Good

“We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.”

— Samuel Johnson

Happiness

“It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.”

— Samuel Johnson

Trust

“Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.”

— Samuel Johnson

Great

“All theory is against freedom of the will all experience for it.”

— Samuel Johnson

Experience

“Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.”

— Samuel Johnson

Great

“If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.”

— Samuel Johnson

Great

“A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.”

— Samuel Johnson

Good

“Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.”

— Samuel Johnson

Imagination