Quotes By Author: Samuel Johnson

“Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life . . . the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.”

“To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.”

“That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.”

“There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not know it.”

“The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.”

“Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.”

“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.”

“I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.”

“Perhaps the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in a few words.We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered; and he may therefore be justly numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to recur habitually to the mind.”

“Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent. ”

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

“Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly!”

“I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.”

“It is necessary to hope… for hope itself is happiness.”