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It is however, reasonable, to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance towards it, though we know it never can be reached.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
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Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Always
Reached
Never
Reasonable
Towards
Perfection
However
Though
Eye
Perfectionism
May
Advance
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Those who will not take the trouble to think for themselves, have always somebody that thinks for them and the difficulty in writing is to please those from whom others learn to be pleased.
Samuel Johnson
Patron: One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is repaid in flattery.
Samuel Johnson
I do not see, Sir, that it is reasonable for a man to be angry at another, whom a woman has preferred to him but angry he is, no doubt and he is loath to be angry at himself.
Samuel Johnson
To be flattered is grateful, even when we know that our praises are not believed by those who pronounce them for they prove, at least, our power, and show that our favour is valued, since it is purchased by the meanness of falsehood.
Samuel Johnson
Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.
Samuel Johnson
There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.
Samuel Johnson
I am a hardened and shameless tea drinker, who has, for twenty years, diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant whose kettle has scarcely time to cool who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and, with tea, welcomes the morning.
Samuel Johnson
Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.
Samuel Johnson
He that voluntarily continues in ignorance, is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces.
Samuel Johnson
The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment.
Samuel Johnson
A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one.
Samuel Johnson
A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.
Samuel Johnson
Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.
Samuel Johnson
These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.
Samuel Johnson
To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind, because their preference was made without, a comparison but it has never been my fortune to find, either in ancient or modern writers, any honourable mention of those, who have, with equal blindness, hated their country.
Samuel Johnson
Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
Samuel Johnson
When two Eglishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.
Samuel Johnson
About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.
Samuel Johnson
Slavery is now nowhere more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.
Samuel Johnson
They make a rout about universal liberty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty.
Samuel Johnson
