Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Friendship is seldom lasting but between equals or where the superiority on one side is reduced by some equivalent advantage on the other.

Friendship is a union of spirits a marriage of hearts and the bond there of virtue.

That friendship may be at once fond and lasting there must not only be equal virtue on each part but virtue of the same kind not only the same end must be proposed but the same means must be approved by both.

Men only become friends by community of pleasures.

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef.

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

The true genius is a mind of large general powers accidentally determined to some particular direction.

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

Is not a patron one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help?

No man ever yet became great by imitation.

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.

Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.

That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem.

It is by studying little things that we attain the great knowledge of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed to trace our own progress in existence by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.

Such is the state of life that none are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing when we have made it the next wish is to change again.

I like a good hater.

Kindness is in our power even when fondness is not.

A man should be careful never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage. People may be amused at the time but they will be remembered and brought out against him upon some subsequent occasion.