Famous Quotes & Sayings

Samuel Johnson

The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion.

Samuel Johnson

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected; and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an individual weight of calumny will be super-added.

Samuel Johnson

No man can enjoy happiness without thinking that he enjoys it.

Samuel Johnson

Philosophers there are who try to make themselves believe that this life is happy; but they believe it only while they are saying it, and never yet produced conviction in a single mind.

Samuel Johnson

What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.

Samuel Johnson

He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.

Samuel Johnson

Since every man is obliged to promote happiness and virtue, he should be careful not to mislead unwary minds, by appearing to set too high a value upon things by which no real excellence is conferred.

Samuel Johnson

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

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

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Samuel Johnson

Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.

Samuel Johnson

To hear complaints is wearisome alike to the wretched and the happy.

Samuel Johnson

The disturbers of happiness are our desires, our griefs, and our fears.

Samuel Johnson

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Every advance into knowledge opens new prospects, and produces new incitements to farther progress.

Samuel Johnson

Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.

Samuel Johnson

To have the management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience and habitual exercise...Let him take a course of chemistry, or a course of rope-dance, or a course of any thing to which he is inclined at the time. Let him contrive to have as many retreats for his mind as he can, as many things to which it can fly from itself.

Samuel Johnson

We seldom learn the true want of what we have till it is discovered that we can have no more.

Samuel Johnson

As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.

Rumer Godden

I suppose the more you have to do, the more you learn to organize and concentrate-or else get fragmented into bits. I have learned to use my 'ten minutes'. I once thought it was not worth sitting down for a time as short as that; now I know differently and, if I have ten minutes, I use them, even if they bring only two lines, and it keeps the book alive.

William H. Seward

The United States are a political state, or organized society, whose end is government, for the security, welfare, and happiness of all who live under its protection.

William Hazlitt

The wretched are in this respect fortunate, that they have the strongest yearning after happiness; and to desire is in some sense to enjoy.

William Hazlitt

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.

William Hazlitt

Look up, laugh loud, talk big, keep the color in your cheek and the fire in your eye, adorn your person, maintain your health, your beauty and your animal spirits.

Wendell Willkie

History shows that our way of life is the stronger way. From it has come more wealth, more industry, more happiness, more human enlightenment than from any other way.

Wendelin Van Draanen

He tells us that life isn't about what happens to you, it's about what you do about what happens to you.

Walter Rauschenbusch

The real joy of life is in its play. Play is anything we do for the joy and love of doing it, apart from any profit, compulsion, or sense of duty. It is the real joy of living.

Walter Rauschenbusch

The influences that really make and mar human happiness are beyond the reach of the law. The law can keep neighbors from trespassing, but it cannot put neighborly courtesy and goodwill into their relations.

W. Somerset Maugham

You tend to close your eyes to truth, beauty and goodness because they give no scope to your sense of the ridiculous.

Yakov Smirnoff

When the needs of one person are being met by the other, there is laughter.

Yakov Smirnoff

I believe that love and laughter can only happen when one person takes the time to think about what would cause the other person to feel good.

Yakov Smirnoff

I believe there is a direct correlation between love and laughter.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Neither rejoice nor lament prematurely; for whatever may happen, all will be well if we only have health; for happiness exists--merely in the imagination.

William Makepeace Thackeray

How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy! Pendennis. Book ii. Chap. xxxi.