Quotes by Dr. Samuel Johnson

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There is a general rule in poetry, which requires that all close terms of art should melt into the general impression, because poetry must speak a universal language.

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The poet must set aside minute distinctions (which one man may have noticed, but another did not) in favor of those characteristics which are equally obvious to the careful observer and to the one who looks in a only

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The duty of the poet is to examine not the individual, but the species; to observe general properties and comprehensive phenomena; he does not count how many stripes a tulip flower has, nor describe the different shades in the green color of the forest... He must also depict, when he paints nature, those prominent and striking features which bring the original to everyone's mind...

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The one whom the author asks what he thinks about his book is subject and not obliged to tell the truth.

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He who does not feel pain, does not believe in its existence.

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He who underestimates himself, also underestimates others, and thus falls into depression.

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We give exactly as much respect as is demanded of us.

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The pleasure that a good interlocutor gives us depends neither on his knowledge nor on his virtues.

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Everyone wants to be smart; those who don't succeed go with tricks almost all the time.

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A stubborn indifference - here is the last refuge of guilt.

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Keeping your own secret is a wise thing, but expecting others to keep it too is a stupid thing.

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Only by risking our honor can we gain honors.

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What cannot be corrected must not be lamented.

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Is life worth living? This is a question for embryos not men.

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Shame is the fear of men, conscience is the fear of God.

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Marriage hides in itself a lot of suffering, but celibacy does not hide in itself any pleasure.

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Happiness means nothing if you don't have someone to share it with, if it doesn't inspire envy.

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Because once upon a time only men could write, all the misfortunes of the world were attributed to women.

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Where secrets begin, lies don't last long.

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Those with whom we shared the joy we remember with pleasure; and on which we endured the hardships together - tenderly.

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What is written without effort is usually read without pleasure.

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Quotations from ancient authors are the watchword of learned men the world over.

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I have two very serious reasons for not publishing the list of my subscribers: first, I have lost all the names; and secondly, I lost all my money.

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I will fight to see the sufferings of the world, because this sight is absolutely necessary for happiness.

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I live to write and I write to live.

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I wouldn't want to live with a man who lies when he's sober and you have to pour a glass over him to get the truth out of him.

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I know of nothing more pleasant and instructive than to compare experience with hope, or to observe the difference between idea and reality.

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I have never had the desire to converse with a man who writes more than he reads.

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I'd rather entrust my money to a scumbag who can't physically steal than to a man of the highest principles.

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I cannot stand mankind, because I consider myself one of its best representatives, and I know that I know nothing.

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Language is the garment of thoughts.

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To strengthen your argument, you need to raise your voice.

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What else is human history but a long story of unrealized ideas and unfulfilled hopes?

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Honesty without erudition is weak and meaningless, but erudition without honesty is very dangerous.

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Man is disposed to complain of the ingratitude of those who have surpassed him.

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Man will submit to any power that will free him from the tyranny of pleasure and chance.

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Unfortunately, it always seems to man that you pity him too little.

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Man would rather have a hundred untruths spoken about him than a single unpleasant truth.

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A man who lodges with another for a week turns him into a slave for a week.

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The man who does not love himself does not deserve our love either.

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The better I know people, the less I expect from them. That's why it's easier now than before to get praise from me.

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The fewer faults we have, the more tolerant we are of the faults of others.

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Reread your own writing and if you find perfectly written lines, delete them mercilessly.

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Anger can be removed by any means, except alcoholism.

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Sad but true: I know almost as much now as I did at eighteen.

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Writers - take the true greatness of a nation.

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The writer is gifted if he can represent the new as something ordinary and the ordinary as something new.

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It is bad when a person lacks intelligence; but it's twice as bad when it's soulless.

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Usually only weak people marry for love.

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Believe me, if a person talks about his misfortunes, then this gives him a certain pleasure - for real pain is experienced in silence.

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Just as peace is the goal of war, so entertainment is the ultimate goal of work.

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I want to laugh with the wise and dine with the rich.

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As long as the author lives, we judge his possibilities by the worst books; and only after he dies - after the best.

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Patriotism is the scoundrel's last refuge.

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To feel one's own intellectual superiority gives you such satisfaction that no intelligent man will be found who would give his intelligence for wealth, however great the latter may be.

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No one would have anything left to do if they denied all objections from the start.

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Nothing promotes modesty like self-importance.

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The unhappy are without compassion.

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Covenant is a trap for virtue.

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Ordinary praise is given on loan, and flattery is given as a gift.

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He was stupid in an unprecedented way and that is why many declared him great.

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He was so courteous to everyone and in everything that no one was grateful to him for it.

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He is as atheist as a dog; in other words, he never thought of such a thing.

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The basic quality of man is the ability to face himself.

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No genius has yet been suffocated by the rotten breath of critics.

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From a man whom you cannot cheer, you cannot expect good deeds.

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The protector is the one who looks with indifference at the drowning person and who gives him a helping hand when he reaches the shore.

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Truly principled are the people most devoid of practical sense.

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Example always has a stronger influence than sermon.

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The chains of habit are usually too weak to be felt until they become too strong to be broken.

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The discussion between an old man and a young man usually ends in contempt and pity from both sides.

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Diversity is an inexhaustible source of pleasure.

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The most successful conversation is the one whose details are forgotten the next day.

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Ambition is more arrogant than blindness; it does not hide our own failures, but only convinces us that these failures are not visible from one side.

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Family happiness is the limit of the most ambitious thoughts.

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Anger is one of the forms of anger.

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Dictionaries are like watches. Even the worst ones are better than nothing, and even the best ones you can't expect absolute accuracy.

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It would seem that everything that was done skillfully, was done easily - is this why the hand of the skilled artist remains in the shadows?

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The third age is usually the age of boasting and a tendency to exaggerate past events and actions.

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It would be good if at least some were happy, and not nobody, as would have happened in the case of full equality.

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The request addressed by the timid, by people who do not trust themselves, is easily rejected, since the petitioner himself doubts its appropriateness.

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The reason for our misfortunes does not lie in the crushing blow of fate, but in the small everyday problems.

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Authors' promises are like lovers' vows.

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Paradise Lost is a book that if you close once, it is very difficult to open it a second time.

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Praise and flattery - two welcoming hosts; only the former serves its guest abundantly, and the latter intoxicates him.

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The world is so constructed that the overseers of slaves cry out loudest about freedom.

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The poet can sing of many women whom he is afraid to marry.

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I live a party life not so much because I love society as because I avoid myself.

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The superiority of some people is purely accidental. They are big because those around them are too small.

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Prejudices have no rational causes and therefore cannot be refuted by rational arguments.

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The advice is offensive, not because it shows us a mistake he has noticed, but because others, it seems, know us no less than we know ourselves.

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Explanations are often necessary - only that it is a mandatory necessity.

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Nature has endowed woman with enormous power, and therefore it is not surprising that laws limit her power.

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We are inclined to believe those we do not know, because they have never lied to us.

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The mouse is an animal in front of which many women faint.

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Hope is a kind of happiness and perhaps the only happiness possible in this world.

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You'd have to be an idiot not to write for money.

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We like to look beyond the borders we don't intend to cross.

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Music is the only sensual and innocent pleasure.

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Men know that women are superior to them and therefore choose the weakest and most ignorant. If they thought otherwise, they wouldn't be afraid of women who know as much as they do.

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Trust me: we can only really hurt ourselves.

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People will do anything just to be able to talk about what they are doing.

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People rarely read the books they received as gifts.

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As easy as it is for me to abstain, so hard for me to be frugal.

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Our imagination is fueled not by pleasure but by hope.

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No one achieved greatness by imitation.

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Nowhere do you feel the futility of human hopes more strongly than in a public library.

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Nothing is small enough for a creature as small as man.

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There is no more innocent occupation in the world than making money.

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Misfortune makes a man wiser, though it does not ennoble him.

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There are few people in the world who have not been delighted by tyranny.

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You can't hate a man you can make fun of.

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Some cheaters choose dumber spouses, hoping to command them - and they always fail.

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For whatever reason you have been insulted, it is better to pay no attention to the insult, for stupidity is seldom capable of indignation, and anger is best punished by contempt.

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Don't even think of leaving this world before the world regrets your departure.

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People don't suspect the mistakes they don't make.

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People are more constant in hate than in love.

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When a butcher says his heart bleeds for his country, he knows what he's talking about.

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When a person knows that in two weeks he will be hanged, he has a remarkable ability to concentrate his thoughts.

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Red wine is a drink for boys, and port wine for men; he who wants to be a hero must drink brandy.

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Beauty without kindness dies unclaimed.

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Round numbers always lie.

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He who praises anyone, praises no one.

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He who wants to go through life honestly must bear in mind, in his youth, that he will grow old, and in his old age to remember that he was once young.

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It is easier to endure evil than to inflict it on someone; for the same reason, it is easier to feel cheated than not to trust.

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Curiosity is one of the most indisputable and obvious properties of a strong intellect.

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

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Better to live rich than die rich.

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The horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse, but not a remarkable mathematician.

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Logic is the art of arriving at an unexpected conclusion.

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Hypocrisy is not a way to get pleasure.

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If your friend says that there is no difference between virtue and vice, you might want to check the number of teaspoons after he leaves.

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If it were not for imagination, we would feel as happy in the arms of a maid as in the arms of a duchess.

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By thinking long about some works, the public learns to think about them correctly.

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The proof shows us in what direction we should focus our doubts.

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Confidence in yourself is the first mandatory condition for great initiatives.

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Goodness is in our power; passion - no.

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If you write twice about the same topic, you will contradict yourself willy-nilly.

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If you have no occupation, avoid solitude; if you are alone, don't waste your time.

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If you want to offend an uneducated person, don't call him a scoundrel; better call it bad manners.

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If you want to love for a long time, love with your reason, not your heart.

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If man does not make acquaintances in life, at some point he will find himself alone.

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If a person is tired of London, it means that he is tired of life.

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If a young man or a middle-aged man cannot remember where he left his hat when he leaves, no one will notice, but if the same happens to a man of respectable age, people will pick up shrug and say, "Yeah, my memory is really bad."

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There are people who can't tear themselves away from their youth all their lives.

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There are people we would cut ties with for good, but we don't want them to do the same.

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For art and perseverance few things are unattainable.

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To such a small creature as man, small things are worthless. Only by giving importance to small things do we reach the great art of suffering less and enjoying more.

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Time and money are the heaviest burdens in life, and therefore the unhappiest of mortals are those who have both in excess...

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We all live with the hope of being liked.

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We all like to talk about a topic that doesn't concern us at all.

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Life is nothing but a way of not thinking about death.

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All self-criticism is hidden praise. We argue with ourselves to prove our impartiality.

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When the secretomania or the mystery starts, the vice or the scam is not too far away either.

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Genius often destroys itself.

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The pride of knowing that you can be trusted with any mystery is the main reason for divulging it.

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Sadness multiplies itself. Let us then do our duty and make merry!

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Even a Scot can make something good - if we catch him young.

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Not even for the sake of ingenuity should you expose yourself in an unfavorable light, the interlocutors will laugh heartily at your history, but sometimes they might remember it and laugh again - at you, this time.

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The critic's dilemma: either I offend the author by telling him the truth, or I lie to him and humiliate myself.

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For great and noble spirits, curiosity is the first and last passion.

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For the poet there is nothing useless.

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If pain were not followed by pleasure, who would bear it?

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Desires are necessary for life to be always in motion.

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The true cost of aid is always directly dependent on how that aid is given.

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The truth is like a cow that does not give milk to the skeptics, but offers them the alternative of milking the bulls.

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The satisfaction of a praise is real when it repeats aloud what pride whispers in our ear...

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Any author can expect to be praised, but the biographer can only hope to avoid being scolded.

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Each of us is lazy or hopes to become.

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Every person has the right to say what he believes to be true and every other person has the right to contradict him. Martyrdom - here is the criterion.

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As fast as time flies, it moves very slowly to someone who is just watching the movement.

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Mutual dislike is usually a direct consequence of glimpsed sympathy.

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As a rule, the man likes to see the dinner table more than to listen to the wife speak Greek.

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Castration is the removal of obscene parts from the book.

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Slander is the revenge of cowards.

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When two Englishmen meet, they start discussing the weather.

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When I am flattered by the one whom everyone flatters, I am truly happy.

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When a man says that the woman gave him pleasure, he does not mean a conversation.

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The art of aphorism consists not so much in expressing an original or profound idea, as in the ability to express, in a few words, an accessible and useful idea.

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The Irish are honest people: they do not speak well of each other.

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Of all types of noise, music is the least unpleasant.

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Life is that pill you can't swallow unless it's coated in gold.

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Life is a march from one desire to another, and not from possession to possession.

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To live is to progress continuously.

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Envy is a permanent necessity of reason, which seldom yields to the treatment of culture and philosophy.

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"Tomorrow" is a great liar, and his lie never loses its charm of novelty.

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Tomorrow is an old thief who will always know how to accompany us.

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Asking questions is a bad habit in a conversation between two gentlemen.

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Law is the ultimate manifestation of human wisdom, which uses human experience for the benefit of society.

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When a man who was very unhappy in his marriage remarries immediately after his wife's death, it is the triumph of hope over experience.

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Knowledge of the subject is to the poet what the strength of the material is to the architect.

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Knowledge is of two kinds. Either we know the subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information about it.

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A fascinating story is rarely entirely true.

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Difficulty is often the child of the rose.

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He who knows how to pay attention knows how to remember.

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There is much good and original in your writing, but what is good is not original, and what is original is not good.

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Marriage can be unhappy only to the extent that life is unhappy.

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Women are jealous of our vices more than anything in the world.

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The patient must not make too great an effort, so as not to be mean.

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It may well be that wealth breeds more convictions than crimes.

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The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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At the age of seventy-seven it's time to get serious.

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Sinless is he who is incapable of sin.

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It is dangerous to always be right in matters directly related to religion or morality.

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This is what a man of his word means! He hasn't been to church in many years, but he always takes off his hat when he passes by.

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Memories and predictions fill almost all of the present.

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In all maxims, precision must be sacrificed to brevity.

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Wine is also bad in that it makes us take our words for thoughts.

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The greatest art in life is to win much by betting as little as possible.

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Politeness is one of those qualities that can only be truly appreciated by feeling the inconvenience caused by its absence.

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There is still much to do and not much to learn in this world.

"Lost souls escape their loss of control in patriotism."

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The path of the human mind is not from joy to joy, but from hope to hope.

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The source of satisfaction lies in our thinking, and whoever, thanks to his little knowledge of human nature, seeks his happiness by wanting to change everything except himself, wastes his life on a hopeless cause, because he only multiplies his sufferings, even though he should regard their elimination as his main goal.

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The free flow of the brain's thoughts; a single, raw work, and not a regular, organized work.

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Revenge is an act of passion; revenge for justice.

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It is better to live rich than to die rich.

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All theories are opposed to the freedom of the will; every experience speaks for him.

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The foundation of all excellence is truth.

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We don't even feel the weak chains of a habit until they become too strong to break free from them.

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The present is the pledge of the future.

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Every man has the power to do nothing.

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It's not how you die, it's how you live that matters.

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Love is the wisdom of a fool and the folly of a wise man.

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The second marriage: the triumph of hope over experience.

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Grief can be a misunderstood joy.

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The most satisfied person is the one who can spend and save at the same time, because this way his joy is double.

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People were wise in many ways, but when they laughed, they laughed all the same.

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Poverty is the great enemy of human happiness; it stifles freedom and makes some virtues impossible and others extremely difficult.

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When we lack love, we can still be kind.

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He who turns himself into a beast frees himself from the pain of human existence.

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Absurd behavior is almost always caused by imitating those we cannot imitate.