Quotes from Samuel Johnson

Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. But let it be considered that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self- interest.

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.

Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.

The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things--the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.

The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.

The world is not yet exhaused; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.

There is no observation more frequently made by such as employ themselves in surveying the conduct of mankind, than that marriage, though the dictate of nature, and the institution of Providence, is yet very often the cause of misery, and that those who enter into that state can seldom forbear to express their repentance, and their envy of those whom either chance or caution hath withheld from it.

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.

To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over so in a series of kindness there is at last one which makes the heart run over.

What we hope ever to do with ease we may learn first to do with diligence.

You must have taken great pains, sir; you could not naturally been so very stupid.