Samuel Johnson Quotes

"Dr Blair . . . asked . . . whether he thought any man of a modern age could have written such poems [Ossian] . . . `Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children.'"

"From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life."

"Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be."

"Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us"

"The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions."

"Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic"

"The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence"

"Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions"

"Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement."

"My dear friend, clear your mind of can't."

"The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery."

"Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified."

"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome."

"Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth."

"Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance."

"It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality."

"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."

"Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives."

"Exercise is labor without weariness."

"At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest."