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An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.

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Jan 10, 2026

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Words are but the signs of ideas.
Samuel Johnson

Quote Author: Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson LL.D. MA (September 18 [O.S. September 7] 1709 - 13 December 1784), often referred to simply as Dr Johnson, is one of England's best known literary figures: a essayist, biographer, lexicographer and a critic of English Literature. He was also a great wit and prose stylist, well known for his aphorisms . Dr Johnson is the most quoted English writer after Shakespeare and has been described as one of the outstanding figures of 18th-century England.

Other Samuel Johnson Quotes

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

He that never thinks never can be wise.

Human life is everywhere in a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

Against the head which innocence secures, Insidious malice aims her dart in vain; Turned backwards by the powerful breath of heaven.

Hope is itself a species of happiness, And perhaps the chief happiness which this world affords.

All theory is against the freedom of the will, All experience for it.

All travel has its advantages. If the traveler visits Better countries, he may learn to improve his own; and if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy his own.

An age that melts with unperceived decay, And glides in modest innocence away.

Assertion is not argument; to contradict the statement of An opponent is not proof that you are correct.

Health is so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly.

Happiness is nothing if it is not known, And very little if it is not envied.

He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds; but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.

Excellence, in any department, can only be attained by the labor of a lifetime. It is not purchased at a lesser price.

Avarice is always poor, but poor by her own fault.

Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

Cunning has effect from the credulity of others. It requires no extraordinary talents to lie and deceive.

Friendship, peculiar boon of Heaven, The noble mind's delight and pride, To men and angels only given, To all the lower world denied.

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion Between his desires and his enjoyments.

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.

I deny the lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of alarming him; you have no business with consequences you are to tell the truth.

But Sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!

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

The man who is asked by an author what he thinks of his work, is put to the torture, and is not obliged to speak the truth.

Your levelers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear leveling up to themselves.

That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.

Lexicographer: A writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.

His fall was destined to a barren strand, A petty fortress, and a dubious hand; He left the name, at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale.

A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.

Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.

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

Of Chesterfield's Letters: They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.

A Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist who does not love Scotland better than truth.

I have found men more kind than I expected, and less just.

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which A man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, then especially, being free from flatterers.

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Read over your compositions, and where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so, they are gone to milk the bull.

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

Of literary criticism: You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.

Of Garrick's death: That stroke of death, which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.

Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature.

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

We tend to trust strangers; as they have not yet deceived us.

A good wife is like the ivy which beautifies the building to which it clings, twining its tendrils more lovingly as time converts the ancient edifice into a ruin.

A successful author is equally in danger of diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write.

Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.

Of ghosts: All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.

Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.

The mental disease of the present generation is impatience of study, contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, And a disposition to rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity.

The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by pain, or the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection of fallacies which do us no harm.

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.

The plaintiff and defendant in an action at law, are like two men ducking their heads in a bucket, and daring each other to remain longest under water.

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 two offices of memory are collection and distribution.

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

The world, in its best state, is nothing more than a larger assembly of beings, combining to counterfeit happiness which they do not feel.

Then with no fiery throbbing pain, No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain, And freed his soul the nearest way.

There is nothing too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain there at knowledge of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence.

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

Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.

Your manuscript is both good and original; But the part that is good is not original, And the part that is original is not good.

You never find people laboring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful income.

Words are the daughters of the earth, And things are the sons of heaven.

Words are but the signs of ideas.

Without economy none can be rich, and with it few can be poor.

This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.

When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.

Those who attain to any excellence commonly spend life in some one single pursuit, for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

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

We are inclined to believe those we do not know, Because they have never deceived us.

To neglect, at any time, preparation for death, is to sleep on our post at a siege; to omit it in old age, is to sleep At an attack.

I believe it will be found that those who marry late Are best pleased with their children, and those who marry early with their partners.

To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all Ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

When there is no hope, there can be no endeavor.

Learn that the present hour alone is man's.

Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, And others extremely difficult.

Old Times have bequeathed us a precept: To be merry and wise, But who has been able to observe it?

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

Men seldom give pleasure where they are not pleased themselves.

Marriage is the best state for man in general; and everyman is a worse man in proportion as he is unfit for the married state.

Power is always gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent.

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

Men are seldom more innocently employed than when they are honestly making money.

Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength.

Knowledge always desires increase; it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, But which will afterwards propagate itself.

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.

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

Life is short. The sooner that a man begins to enjoy his wealth the better.

Solitude excludes pleasure, and does not always secure peace.

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.

Riches exclude only one inconvenience, And that is poverty.

The jest which is expected is already destroyed.

Round numbers are always false.

Scarcely anything awakens attention like a tale of cruelty. The writer of news never fails to tell how the enemy murdered children and ravished virgins.

The first years of man make provision for the last.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

The future is purchased by the present.

Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise And motion.

Suspicion is no less an enemy to virtue than to happiness.

Reflect that life, like every other blessing, Derives its value from its use alone.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

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