Samuel Johnson
English writer and lexicographer, 1709-1784
99 quotes.
Quotes by Samuel Johnson
- The habit of looking on the best side of every event is worth more than a thousand a year.
- The triumph of hope over experience.
- The true and strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.
- The true art of memory is the art of attention.
- There are two types of knowledge. One is knowing a thing. The other is knowing where to find it.
- There is a frightful interval between the seed and the timber.
- There is no man whose kindness we may not some time want, or by whose malice we may not some time suffer.
- There is nothing too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
- Those who attain any excellence commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.
- To faint or loiter, when only the last efforts are required, is to steer the ship through tempests, and abandon it to the winds in sight of land; it is to break the ground and scatter the seed, and at last to neglect the harvest.
- 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.
- To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer.
- To tell our own secrets is often folly; to communicate those of others is treachery.
- We are all envious naturally: but, by checking envy, we get the better of it.
- What we hope ever to do with ease we may learn first to do with diligence.
- Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.
- When there is no hope, there can be no endeavor.
- Without economy none can be rich, and with it few will be poor.
- Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.