Samuel Johnson Quotes on Happiness (24 Quotes)

Come, let me know what it is that makes a Scotchman happy.

I am not able to instruct you. I can only tell that I have chosen wrong. I have passed my time in study without experience in the attainment of sciences which can, for the most part, be but remotely useful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the expense of all the common comforts of life I have missed the endearing elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of domestic tenderness.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

When once a man has made celebrity necessary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest and most timorous malignity, if not to take away his satisfaction, at least to withhold it. His enemies may indulge their pride by airy negligence and gratify their malice by quiet neutrality.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Such is the constitution of man that labor may be styled its own reward nor will any external incitements be requisite, if it be considered how much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body

That all who are happy are equally happy is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. A small drinking glass and a large one may be equally full, but the large one holds more than the small.

Happiness is nothing if it is not known, And very little if it is not envied.

Let him who desires to see others happy, make haste to give while his gift can be enjoyed, and remember that every moment of delay takes away something from the value of his benefaction

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

He that travels in theory has no inconveniences he has shade and sunshine at his disposal, and wherever he alights finds tables of plenty and looks of gaiety. These ideas are indulged till the day of departure arrives, the chaise is called, and the progress of happiness begins. A few miles teach him the fallacies of imagination. The road is dusty, the air is sultry, the horses are sluggish. He longs for the time of dinner that he may eat and rest. The inn is crowded, his orders are neglected, and nothing remains but that he devour in haste what the cook has spoiled, and drive on in quest of better entertainment. He finds at night a more commodious house, but the best is always worse than he expected.

Suspicion is no less an enemy to virtue than to happiness.

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.

'I fly from pleasure,' said the prince, 'because pleasure has ceased to please I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others.'

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

Labor, if it were not necessary for existence, would be indispensable for the happiness of man.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

There are multitudes whose life is nothing but a continuous lottery who are always within a few months of plenty and happiness, and how often soever they are mocked with blanks, expect a prize from the next adventure.

Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

It would add much to human happiness, if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at once useless and afflictive, that the mind might perform its function without encumbrance, and the past might no longer encroach upon the

There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern... No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

Prudence keeps life safe, but it does not often make it happy.

Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.