Category: Quote of the Day

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

Samuel Johnson

It is seldom that we find either men or places such as we expect them. … Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.

Samuel Johnson

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance. Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.

Samuel Johnson

Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed.

Samuel Johnson

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

Samuel Johnson

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation as is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectation raised, not by the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken.

Samuel Johnson

Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious.

Samuel Johnson

Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.

How small of all that human hearts endure,

That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!

Still to ourselves in every place consigned,

Our own felicity we make or find.

With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,

Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.

Samuel Johnson

Example is always more efficacious than precept.

Samuel Johnson

Nothing … will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.

Samuel Johnson