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At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
Teacher
Translator
Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Aging
Seven
Age
Time
Seventy
Seventies
Earnest
Birthday

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Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.
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A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company
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The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
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A man finds in the productions of nature an inexhaustible stock of material on which he can employ himself, without any temptations to envy or malevolence, and has always a certain prospect of discovering new reasons for adoring the sovereign author of the universe.
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The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another.
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Hunger is never delicate they who are seldom gorged to the full with praise may be safely fed with gross compliments, for the appetite must be satisfied before it is disgusted.
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As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who consults his own dignity, to retract it as soon as he discovers it.
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Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.
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A blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another.
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To proportion the eagerness of contest to its importance seems too hard a task for human wisdom. The pride of wit has kept ages busy in the discussion of useless questions, and the pride of power has destroyed armies, to gain or to keep unprofitable possessions.
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I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
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The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
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The uniform necessities of human nature produce in a great measure uniformity of life, and for part of the day make one place like another to dress and to undress, to eat and to sleep, are the same in London as in the country.
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An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature.
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Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves.
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Your manuscript is both good and original but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
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To go and see one druidical temple is only to see that it is nothing, for there is neither art nor power in it and seeing one is quite enough.
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No man should attempt to teach others what he has never learned himself
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Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn. [Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.]
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Nothing can be truly great which is not right.
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