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I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
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
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
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Never
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty, and of ease, and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health.
Samuel Johnson
In discussing these exceptions from the course of nature, the first question is, whether the fact be justly stated. That which is strange is delightful, and a pleasing error is not willingly detected.
Samuel Johnson
Why, sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, Sir, is not in Nature.
Samuel Johnson
Study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves
Samuel Johnson
I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.
Samuel Johnson
If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.
Samuel Johnson
Condemned to Hope's delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts or slow decline Our social comforts drop away.
Samuel Johnson
Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.
Samuel Johnson
All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.
Samuel Johnson
Scarce any man becomes eminently disagreeable but by a departure from his real character, and an attempt at something for which nature or education has left him unqualified.
Samuel Johnson
We often need reminding even if we do not often need educating.
Samuel Johnson
A fallible being will fail somewhere.
Samuel Johnson
All this [wealth] excludes but one evil, poverty.
Samuel Johnson
Power is gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent.
Samuel Johnson
I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
Samuel Johnson
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
Samuel Johnson
No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.
Samuel Johnson
Philosophy has often attempted to repress insolence by asserting that all conditions are leveled by death a position which, however it may defect the happy, will seldom afford much comfort to the wretched.
Samuel Johnson
Few of those who fill the world with books, have any pretensions to the hope either of pleasing or instructing. They have often no other task than to lay two books before them, out of which they compile a third, without any new material of their own, and with very little application of judgment to those which former authors have supplied.
Samuel Johnson
Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
Samuel Johnson
