Quotes by

Samuel Johnson

You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle. – Samuel Johnson

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives. – Samuel Johnson

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. – Samuel Johnson

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise. – Samuel Johnson

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

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are. – Samuel Johnson

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess. – Samuel Johnson

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence. – Samuel Johnson

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope. – Samuel Johnson

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution. – Samuel Johnson

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself. – Samuel Johnson

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern. – Samuel Johnson

There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern… No, Sir there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn. – Samuel Johnson

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife he is always proud of himself as the source of it. – Samuel Johnson

Small debts are like small shot they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon of loud noise, but little danger. – Samuel Johnson

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them. – Samuel Johnson

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles. – Samuel Johnson

A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice. – Samuel Johnson

No man was ever great by imitation. – Samuel Johnson

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil. – Samuel Johnson