Samuel Johnson Quotes

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.

He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.

I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark.

There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

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.

Small debts are like small gun shot; they are rattling around us on all sides and one can scarcely escape being wounded. Large debts are like canons, they produce a loud noise, but are of little danger.

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.