Samuel Johnson Quotes on Life
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Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail.
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It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.
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No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned ... A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.
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This world, where much is to be done and little to be known.
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A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.
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'Enlarge my life with multitude of days!' In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays: Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know That life protracted is protracted woe.
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Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?
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He that would pass the latter part of life with honour and decency, must, when he is young, consider that he shall one day be old; and remember, when he is old, that he has once been young.
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Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, of sickness, or captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable; nor does it appear that the happiest lot of terrestrial existence can set us above the want of this general blessing; or that life, when the gifts of nature and of fortune are accumulated upon it, would not still be wretched, were it not elevated and delighted by the expectation of some new possession, of some enjoyment yet behind, by which the wish shall at last be satisfied, and the heart filled up to its utmost extent.
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It is seldom that we find either men or places such as we expect them. ... Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.
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Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.
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Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.
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Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
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It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.
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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.
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Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
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Life admits not of delays; when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.
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When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
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It is better to live rich, than to die rich.