The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope. – 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
Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true. – Samuel Johnson
If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair. – Samuel Johnson
There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern. – Samuel Johnson
So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something. – 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
Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess. – Samuel Johnson
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne. – Samuel Johnson
The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book. – 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
It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see. – Samuel Johnson
Getting money is not all a man’s business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life. – Samuel Johnson
You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company. – Samuel Johnson
Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself. – Samuel Johnson
I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney. – Samuel Johnson
From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life. – Samuel Johnson
Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it. – Samuel Johnson