Samuel Johnson

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

Samuel Johnson

The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another; and each labors first to impose upon himself and then to propagate the imposture.

Samuel Johnson

The arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration.

Samuel Johnson

The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation.

Samuel Johnson

The care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature.

Samuel Johnson

The civilities of the great are never thrown away.

Samuel Johnson

The cure for the greatest part of human miseries is not radical, but palliative.

Samuel Johnson

The dangers gather as the treasures rise.

Samuel Johnson

The disturbers of happiness are our desires, our griefs, and our fears.

Samuel Johnson

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

Samuel Johnson