Samuel Johnson Quotes

"Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity."

"Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor."

"The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken"

"The chains of habit are generally too week to be felt, until they are too strong to be broken."

"Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness."

"To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity."

"For who is pleased with himself."

"There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain"

"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."

"Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates"

"While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it."

"Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates."

"Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary."

"Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze."

"No greater felicity can genius attain than that of having purified intellectual pleasure, separated mirth from indecency, and wit from licentiousness"

"To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life."

"The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it."

"Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost."

"Knowledge always demands increase; it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but will afterwards always propagate itself."

"Knowledge is of two kinds: We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information about it."