I have found you an argument: but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
Samuel Johnson Quotations
We found 111 matching quotations.
When once a man has made celebrity necessary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest and most timorous malignity, if not to take away his satisfaction, at least to withhold it. His enemies may indulge their pride by airy negligence and gratify their malice by quiet neutrality.
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.
Wine makes a man more pleased with himself I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.
If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone.
You teach your daugthers the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.
It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.
A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him.
The world is not yet exhaused; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.
To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.
Being in a ship is like being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
I would rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
He who praises everybody, praises nobody.
I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.
Our aspirations are our possibilities.
I live in the crowds of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.
Oats. A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.
I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.
It is better to live rich than to die rich.
A cucumber whould be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and viniger, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.
Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.
Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.
There is no observation more frequently made by such as employ themselves in surveying the conduct of mankind, than that marriage, though the dictate of nature, and the institution of Providence, is yet very often the cause of misery, and that those who enter into that state can seldom forbear to express their repentance, and their envy of those whom either chance or caution hath withheld from it.
If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair.
He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.
Self confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
A man ought to read just as inclination leads him for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
Grief is a species of idleness.
Of all the griefs that harass the distrest,
Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.
Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.
To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.
An intellectual improvement arises from leisure.
The world is not yet exhaused let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.
Round numbers are always false.
Americans are a race of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.
Golf is a game in which you claim the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood.
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
What we hope ever to do with ease we may learn first to do with diligence.
Men are wise in proportion not to their experience but to their capacity for experience.
It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.
No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.
As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.
Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.
ESSAY -- A loose sally of the mind an irregular indigested piece not a regular and orderly composition.
Your aspirations are your possibilities.
Abstinence is as easy to me, as temperance would be difficult.
If you are idle, be not solitary. If you are solitary, be not idle.
You must have taken great pains, sir; you could not naturally been so very stupid.
There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.
Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.
Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
I hate mankind, for I think myself to be one of them, and I know how bad I am.
In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which he cannot apply will make no man wise.
Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden exchange meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty.
The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.
It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument.
I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.
Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.
When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.
No mind is much employed upon the present recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments.
The Irish are a fair people - they never speak well of one another
Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it.
Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
Hope is necessary in every condition.
An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.
No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.
There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.
Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.
Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.
Language is the dress of thought.
There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.
Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
Learn that the present hour alone is man's.
Of all the griefs that harass the distrest, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.
Be not too hasty to trust or admire the teachers of morality they discourse like angels, but they live like men.
A cucumber should be well-sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.
No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.
If you are idle, be not solitary if you are solitary be not idle.
That fellow seems to posses but one idea and that is the wrong one.
There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.
network: anything reticulated or decussated, with interstices between the intersections
The Irish are a fair people - they never speak well of one another.
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.
Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.
Hope itself is a species of happiness, and perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.