Samuel Johnson
168 quotations
I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.
The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.
He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.
No one ever became great by imitation.
The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.
Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.
We are inclined to believe those whom we don not know because they have never deceived us.
The habit of looking on the best side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a years.
The chains of habit are generally too week to be felt, until they are too strong to be broken.
To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.
Happiness is not a state to arrive at, rather, a manner of traveling.
For who is pleased with himself.
Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.
I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep the people from vice.
Sir, a man may be so much of everything, that he is nothing of anything.
As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.
Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.
Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.
No man was ever great by imitation.
I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces.