414 quotes
It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.
Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson (1786)
Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.
Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died: Johnson said, it was the triumph of hope over experience.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.
Dishonor waits on perfidy. A man should blush to think a falsehood; it is the crime of cowards.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
CLUB — An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions.
A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.
Ignorance in other men may be censured as idleness, in an academick it must be abhorred as treachery.
The true Genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
Lives of the English Poets (1779)
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason.
Lives of the English Poets (1779)
Goldsmith, however, was a man who whatever he wrote, did it better than any other man could do.
The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.
No man is much pleased with a companion, who does not increase, in some respect, his fondness for himself.
The Rambler (1750)