Quotes by Samuel Johnson

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

Exercise is labor without weariness.

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.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

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

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

“In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.”

“It has been observed in all ages that the advantages of nature or of fortune have contributed very little to the promotion of happiness; and that those whom the splendour of their rank, or the extent of their capacity, have placed upon the summits of human life, have not often given any just occasion to envy in those who look up to them from a lower station; whether it be that apparent superiority incites great designs, and great designs are naturally liable to fatal miscarriages; or that the general lot of mankind is misery, and the misfortunes of those whose eminence drew upon them an universal attention, have been more carefully recorded, because they were more generally observed, and have in reality only been more conspicuous than others, not more frequent, or more severe.”

“That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.”

“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”