Samuel Johnson Quotes

English - Author September 18, 1709 - December 13, 1784

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

Samuel Johnson

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

Samuel Johnson

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Samuel Johnson

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

Samuel Johnson

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Samuel Johnson

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Samuel Johnson

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

Samuel Johnson