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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

“Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.”

— Samuel Johnson

Death

“The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.”

— Samuel Johnson

Morning

“Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.”

— Samuel Johnson

Success

“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.”

— Samuel Johnson

Knowledge

“To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.”

— Samuel Johnson

Home

“No man was ever great by imitation.”

— Samuel Johnson

Great

“Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.”

— Samuel Johnson

Knowledge

“The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef love, like being enlivened with champagne.”

— Samuel Johnson

Friendship

“To keep your secret is wisdom but to expect others to keep it is folly.”

— Samuel Johnson

Wisdom

“Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.”

— Samuel Johnson

Power

“What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.”

— Samuel Johnson

Hope

“All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.”

— Samuel Johnson

Great

“Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.”

— Samuel Johnson

Great

“Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.”

— Samuel Johnson

Knowledge

“Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.”

— Samuel Johnson

Best

“There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern... No, Sir there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.”

— Samuel Johnson

Happiness

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

— Samuel Johnson

Alone

“Exercise is labor without weariness.”

— Samuel Johnson

Fitness

“Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.”

— Samuel Johnson

Music

“Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.”

— Samuel Johnson

Equality