The quotations of

Samuel Johnson

English writer and lexicographer

1709–1784

99 quotes, most often on Clever Jabs, Writing and Knowledge. Part of the Writers collection.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I (14 July 1763) p. 121
- Reading
The true Genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)
- Genius
Sir, your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.
Life of Johnson (Boswell) (1763)
- Politics
Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III (19 September 1777) p. 351, often misquoted as being hanged in the morning.
- Life & Death
It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.
Dr. Johnson’s Table Talk (London: 1807), p. 67
- Truth & Lies
There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II (21 March 1776) p. 287
- Happiness
Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV (June 1784) p. 526
- Courage
- Virtue
He that thinks himself capable of astonishing may write blank verse: but those that hope only to please must condescend to rhyme.
Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)
- Poetry
Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don’t let him go to the devil, where he is known.
Life of Johnson (Boswell) (1773)
- Comedy
But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I (14 July 1763) p. 123
- Clever Jabs
- Virtue
A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died: Johnson said, it was the triumph of hope over experience.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II (1770) p. 182
- Hope
- Marriage
There is now less flogging in our great schools than formerly, but then less is learned there; so that what the boys get at one end they lose at the other.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II (1775) p. 273
- Comedy
- Education
Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I (1743)
- Clever Jabs
- Writing
That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), Inch Kenneth
- Patriotism
A desire for knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every human being, whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all he has to get knowledge.
Dr. Johnson’s Table Talk (London: 1807), p. 64
- Knowledge

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