A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.
Samuel Johnson

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.
Samuel Johnson

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.
Samuel Johnson

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.
Samuel Johnson

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.
Samuel Johnson

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
Samuel Johnson

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.
Samuel Johnson

A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.
Samuel Johnson

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.
Samuel Johnson

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.
Samuel Johnson


A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
Samuel Johnson

Actions are visible, though motives are secret.
Samuel Johnson

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.
Samuel Johnson

Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.
Samuel Johnson

Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own.
Samuel Johnson

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.
Samuel Johnson

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

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.
Samuel Johnson

Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?
Samuel Johnson

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.
Samuel Johnson