Quotes by Samuel Johnson

"The true art of memory is the art of attention."

"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."

"Words are but the signs of ideas."

"Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others."

"Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance."

"What is easy is seldom excellent."

"Exercise is labor without weariness."

"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."

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."

"Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance."

"If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance."

"There is nothing, Sir, 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."

"There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern."

"What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence."

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

"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."

"He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts."

"Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful."

"Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise."

"Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives."

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."

"Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."

"My dear friend, clear your mind of cant."

"Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not."

"Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little."

"Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich."

"To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly."

"Disease generally begins that equality which death completes."

"It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality."

"Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth."

"Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home."