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Language is the dress of thought.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Literary Historian
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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I remember a passage in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.
Samuel Johnson
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Other things may be seized by might, or purchased with money, but knowledge is to be gained only by study, and study to be prosecuted only in retirement.
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We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor
Samuel Johnson
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A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.
Samuel Johnson
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Among the calamities of war may be numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.
Samuel Johnson
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Every man that has felt pain knows how little all other comforts can gladden him to whom health is denied. Yet who is there does not sometimes hazard it for the enjoyment of an hour?
Samuel Johnson
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All power of fancy over reason is a degree of madness.
Samuel Johnson
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Unless a woman has an amorous heart, she is a dull companion.
Samuel Johnson
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Every man's affairs, however little, are important to himself.
Samuel Johnson
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The king who makes war on his enemies tenderly distresses his subjects most cruelly.
Samuel Johnson
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By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen. I hope I see things from a greater distance.
Samuel Johnson
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Don't tell me of deception a lie is a lie, whether it be a lie to the eye or a lie to the ear.
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It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous.
Samuel Johnson
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Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.
Samuel Johnson
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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
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Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.
Samuel Johnson
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The coquette has companions, indeed, but no lovers,--for love is respectful and timorous and where among her followers will she find a husband?
Samuel Johnson
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There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.
Samuel Johnson
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Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
Samuel Johnson
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Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.
Samuel Johnson