I. Frost's Selected Quotations

Everything at Amazon by and about: Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784)

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

Always... set a high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclintion prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

Among the calamities of war may be numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill....Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):
He is not only dull in himself, he is the cause of dullness in others.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

I have found men more kind than I expected, and less just.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

Kindness is in our power, but fondness is not.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

Many falsehoods are passing into uncontradicted history.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought; our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

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.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

There are charms made only for distant admiration.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

There is nothing too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

To do nothing is in every man's power.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

To improve the golden moment of opportunity and catch the good that is within our reach is the great art of life.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

When any calamity has been suffered, the first thing to be remembered is how much has been escaped.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.
Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784):

Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail.
Prologue to the Tragedy of Irene. Samuel Johnson.

For we that live to please must please to live.
Ibid Samuel Johnson.

Catch, then, oh catch the transient hour;
Samuel Johnson.

Improve each moment as it flies!
Samuel Johnson

Life 's a short summer, man a flower;
Samuel Johnson.

"I fly from pleasure," said the prince, "because pleasure has ceased to please; I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others."
Chap. iii. Samuel Johnson.

A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.
Chap. xii. Samuel Johnson.

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
Ibid. Samuel Johnson.

Knowledge is more than equivalent to force.
Chap. xiii. Samuel Johnson.

I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.
Chap. xvi. Samuel Johnson.

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.
Ibid. Samuel Johnson.

The first years of man must make provision for the last.
Chap. xvii. Samuel Johnson.

Example is always more efficacious than precept.
Samuel Johnson.

I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.
Preface to his Dictionary. Samuel Johnson.

Words are men's daughters, but God's sons are things.
Boulter's Monument. (Supposed to have been inserted by Dr. Johnson, 1745.)

He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.
The Idler. No. 57. Samuel Johnson.

What is read twice is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed.
No. 74. Samuel Johnson.

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.
Ibid. Samuel Johnson.

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
Chap. iii. 1759. Samuel Johnson.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
Chap. vi. 1763. Samuel Johnson.

Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an access of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.
Chap. ix. Samuel Johnson.

I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else.
Ibid. Samuel Johnson.

This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.
Samuel Johnson Ibid.

I do not know, sir, that the fellow is an infidel; but if he be an infidel, he is an infidel as a dog is an infidel; that is to say, he has never thought upon the subject.
Samuel Johnson Vol. iii. Chap. iii. 1769.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.
Samuel Johnson Chap. iv.

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.
Samuel Johnson Chap. v. 1770.

I am a great friend to public amusements; for they keep people from vice.
Samuel Johnson Chap. viii. 1772.

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.
Samuel Johnson bid.

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.
Samuel Johnson Chap. viii. 1775.

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson Chap. ix.

Hell is paved with good intentions.
Samuel Johnson Ibid.

Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
Samuel Johnson Ibid.

I never take a nap after dinner but when I have had a bad night; and then the nap takes me.
Samuel Johnson Vol. vi. Chap. i. 1775.

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.
Ibid.

All this [wealth] excludes but one evil,--poverty.
Samuel Johnson Chap. ix. 1777.

Employment, sir, and hardships prevent melancholy.
Ibid.

When a man is tired of London he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
Ibid.

The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.
Samuel Johnson Chap. vi. 1778.

Claret is the liquor for boys, port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
Ibid.

A Frenchman must be always talking, whether he knows anything of the matter or not; an Englishman is content to say nothing when he has nothing to say.
Samuel Johnson Chap. x.

I have found you an argument; I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
Samuel Johnson

The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.
Samuel Johnson

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
Samuel Johnson

Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
Samuel Johnson

Books that you may carry to the fire and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.
Samuel Johnson Hawkins. 197..

I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.
Samuel Johnson Seward. 617.

Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.
Samuel Johnson Tour to the Hebrides. Sept. 20, 1773.

The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honourable gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience.
Samuel Johnson Pitt's Reply to Walpole. Speech, March 6, 1741.