414 quotes
Hell is paved with good intentions.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.
Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson (1786)
Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.
The Rambler (1750)
Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.
A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.
Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?
The Rambler (1750)
Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)
Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)
There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.
The Rambler (1750)
Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
A cow is a very good animal in the field; but we turn her out of a garden.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
I am a great friend to public amusements; for they keep people from vice.
All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
A man may be so much of every thing, that he is nothing of any thing.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.
The Idler (1758)