Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.
Samuel Johnson
- Life
- 1709-1784
- Occupations
- lexicographer, linguist, poet
- Notable works
- A Dictionary of the English Language
Facts: Wikidata (CC0), as of 2026-07-09
All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the reproach of falsehood.
Samuel Johnson
He has, indeed, done it very well; but it is a foolish thing well done.
Samuel Johnson
I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
Samuel Johnson
I have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch and tumbling into it.
Samuel Johnson
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
Samuel Johnson
It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.
Samuel Johnson
Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
Study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves.
Samuel Johnson
Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time, of that time which never can return.
Samuel Johnson
That man is never happy for the present is so true, that all his relief from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little while. Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
Samuel Johnson
The longer we live, and the more we think, the higher value we learn to put on the friendship and tenderness of parents and of friends. Parents we can have but once; and he promises himself too much, who enters life with the expectation of finding many friends.
Samuel Johnson
We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.
Samuel Johnson