Samuel Johnson Quotes About Animals

• A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse, not a remarkable mathematician.

  Samuel Johnson

  Horse, Animal, Mathematician

• Sleep is a state in which a great part of every life is passed. No animal has yet been discovered, whose existence is not varied with intervals of insensibility; and some late philosophers have extended the empire of sleep over the vegetable world.

  Samuel Johnson

  Sleep, Animal, Vegetables

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”

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

  Samuel Johnson

  Happiness, Animal, Equality

  Samuel Johnson, James Boswell (1818). “The table talk of Samuel Johnson”, p.120

• Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.

  Samuel Johnson

  Nature, Rain, Animal

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1799). “Boswell's Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides, and Johnson's Diary of A Journey Into North Wales”, p.493

• The diversion of baiting an author has the sanction of all ages and nations, and is more lawful than the sport of teasing other animals, because, for the most part, he comes voluntarily to the stake, furnished, as he imagines, by the patron powers of literature, with resistless weapons, and impenetrable armour, with the mail of the boar of Erymanth, and the paws of the lion of Nemea.

  Samuel Johnson

  Sports, Writing, Animal

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1840). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.267

• A cow is a very good animal in the field; but we turn her out of a garden.

  Samuel Johnson

  Animal, Garden, Cows

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Edmond Malone (1824). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., Comprehending an Account of His Studies, and Numerous Works, in Chronological Order: A Series of His Epistolary Correspondence and Conversations with Many Eminent Persons; and Various Original Pieces of His Composition, Never Before Published; the Whole Exhibiting a View of Literature and Literary Men in Great Britain, for Near Half a Century During which He Flourished”, p.172

• An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty. Men who have practiced tortures on animals without pity, relating them without shame, how can they still hold their heads among human beings?

  Samuel Johnson

  Animal, Men, Shame

• Gaiety is to good-humor as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance. The one overpowers weak spirits, the other recreates and revives them. Gaiety seldom fails to give some pain; good-humor boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending.

  Samuel Johnson

  Pain, Believe, Animal

• Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Animal, Reason

  Samuel Johnson (1841). “The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia: the vanity of human wished: The History of Solÿman and Almena by John Langhorne”, p.41

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