Samuel Johnson Quotes About Feelings

• The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

  Samuel Johnson

  Love, Friendship, Food

  Samuel Johnson, James Boswell (1825). “The Table Talk of Dr. Johnson: Comprising Opinions and Anecdotes of Life and Literature, Men, Manners, and Morals”, p.175

• No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Emotional, Political

  Samuel Johnson (1846). “The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia: A Tale”, p.144

• There are three distinct kind of judges upon all new authors or productions; the first are those who know no rules, but pronounce entirely from their natural taste and feelings; the second are those who know and judge by rules; and the third are those who know, but are above the rules. These last are those you should wish to satisfy. Next to them rate the natural judges; but ever despise those opinions that are formed by the rules.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Judging, Feelings

  Samuel Johnson (1961). “The critical opinions of Samuel Johnson”

• To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude; it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

  Samuel Johnson

  Pain, Solitude, Feelings

  Rasselas ch. 26 (1759)

• Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

  Samuel Johnson

  Trust, Believe, Men

• We may have uneasy feelings for seeing a creature in distress without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them.

  Samuel Johnson

  Feelings, Wish, May

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