Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Quotes

• Of all the griefs that harass the distrest,
  Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.

• In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

• There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.

• If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.

• It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

• Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden exchange meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty.

• There is no observation more frequently made by such as employ themselves in surveying the conduct of mankind, than that marriage, though the dictate of nature, and the institution of Providence, is yet very often the cause of misery, and that those who enter into that state can seldom forbear to express their repentance, and their envy of those whom either chance or caution hath withheld from it.

• Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

• The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

• A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.

• Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

• No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.

• A second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.

• A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

• No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.

• A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.

• Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding.

• Sex: the expense is damnable, the position is ridiculous, and the pleasure fleeting.

• Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

• Round numbers are always false.