Inspirational Quotations by Samuel Johnson (#650)

Today marks the birthday of Samuel Johnson (1709–84,) the British writer who made lasting contributions to English literature. Often referred to as Dr. Johnson and regarded as the greatest intellectual in British history, he wrote many famous essays, sermons, poetry, biographies, literary criticisms, plays, and novels.

Johnson started writing in his mid-20s, publishing essays, poems, and prose. During his 30s, he contributed more than 200 essays to magazines and launched his colossal undertaking: an authoritative Dictionary of the English Language (1755.) With the help of six mechanical assistants, Johnson completed the lexicon in nine years. Published in two volumes, it contained more than 42,000 entries. This dictionary made Johnson famous, and it remains his most enduring accomplishment.

Despite his prodigious literary output, Johnson is most remembered not for anything he wrote, but for the biography that James Boswell (1740–95) wrote of Johnson. Boswell idolized Johnson and kept scrupulously detailed diaries of his mannerisms, characteristics, routines, decisions, opinions, and everything else about his life. Boswell used these notes to write a comprehensive biography, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). Owing to its thorough portrayal of its subject as a complete person and not just as a catalog of events and achievements in his life, The Life of Samuel Johnson is regarded the definitive precursor to modern biographies. Boswell’s records of Johnson’s numerous aphorisms also made him one of the most-quoted writers in the English language.

Inspirational Quotations by Samuel Johnson

The future is purchased by the present.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Where there is no difficulty there is no praise.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every human being whose mind is not debauched will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The best of conversations occur when there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm quiet interchange of sentiments.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Men are seldom more innocently employed than when they are honestly making money.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A man may be so much of every thing, that he is nothing of any thing.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow; but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

To convince any man against his will is hard, but to please him against his will is justly pronounced by Dryden to be above the reach of human abilities.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equally destructive to happiness with the diminution of possession, and he that teaches another to long for what he never shall obtain is no less an enemy to his quiet than if he had robbed him of part of his patrimony.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Life admits not of delays; when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

I am inclined to believe that few attacks either of ridicule or invective make much noise, but by the help of those they provoke.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The habit of looking on the best side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, of sickness, or captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable; nor does it appear that the happiest lot of terrestrial existence can set us above the want of this general blessing; or that life, when the gifts of nature and of fortune are accumulated upon it, would not still be wretched, were it not elevated and delighted by the expectation of some new possession, of some enjoyment yet behind, by which the wish shall at last be satisfied, and the heart filled up to its utmost extent.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

It is worth a thousand pounds a year to have the habit of looking on the bright side of things.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour way.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

One of the aged greatest miseries is that they cannot easily find a companion able to share the memories of the past.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess, and to gain applause which he cannot keep.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Try and forget our cares and sickness, and contribute, as we can to the happiness of each other.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The first years of man must make provision for the last.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance. Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A man guilty of poverty easily believes himself suspected.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

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.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. He’ll beat you all at piety.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

No man is much pleased with a companion, who does not increase, in some respect, his fondness for himself.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he has both enjoyments.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The vicious count their years; virtuous, their acts.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Getting money is not all a man’s business; to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Hell is paved with good intentions.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

He who praises everybody praises nobody.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A jest breaks no bones.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

It is better to live rich than to die rich.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Many things difficult in design prove easy in performance.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)