The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape. – Samuel Johnson
I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man’s virtues the means of deceiving him. – Samuel Johnson
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little. – Samuel Johnson
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. – Samuel Johnson
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
What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more. – Samuel Johnson
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression. – Samuel Johnson
It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world. – Samuel Johnson
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford. – Samuel Johnson
No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring. – Samuel Johnson
Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven’t courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others. – Samuel Johnson
By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time. – Samuel Johnson
Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it. – Samuel Johnson
Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles. – Samuel Johnson
I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world. – Samuel Johnson
The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities. – Samuel Johnson
Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him. – Samuel Johnson
Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable. – Samuel Johnson
