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Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
-Samuel Johnson
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It is very natural for young men to be vehement, acrimonious and severe. For as they seldom comprehend at once all the consequences of a position, or perceive the difficulties by which cooler and more experienced reasoners are restrained from confidence, they form their conclusions with great precipitance. Seeing nothing that can darken or embarrass the question, they expect to find their own opinion universally prevalent, and are inclined to impute uncertainty and hesitation to want of honesty, rather than of knowledge.
-Samuel Johnson
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Among the calamities of war, may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.
-Samuel Johnson
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He who praises every body, praises nobody.
-Samuel Johnson
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The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
-Samuel Johnson
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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.
-Samuel Johnson
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Actors, Acting
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Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.
-Samuel Johnson
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Adversity
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Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.
-Samuel Johnson
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Advertising
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The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.
-Samuel Johnson
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Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.
-Samuel Johnson
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Advice
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The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.
-Samuel Johnson
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Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.
-Samuel Johnson
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Age
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When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.
-Samuel Johnson
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At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
-Samuel Johnson
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They that have grown old in a single state are generally found to be morose, fretful and captious; tenacious of their own practices and maxims; soon offended by contradiction or negligence; and impatient of any association but with those that will watch their nod, and submit themselves to unlimited authority.
-Samuel Johnson
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Alcohol/Alcoholism
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Sir, I have no objection to a man's drinking wine, if he can do it in moderation. I found myself apt to go to excess in it, and therefore, after having been for some time without it, on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it. Every man is to judge for himself, according to the effects which he experiences.
-Samuel Johnson, J. Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1784
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A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.
-Samuel Johnson
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There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.
-Samuel Johnson
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There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.
-Samuel Johnson
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Ambition
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He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
-Samuel Johnson
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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
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America
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Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.
-Samuel Johnson
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Apathy
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I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.
-Samuel Johnson
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Argument & Debate
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Sir, I have found you an argument. I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
-Samuel Johnson
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Art
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No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.
-Samuel Johnson
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Books by and about Samuel Johnson