Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Much
Goods
Pass
Distance
Reach
Either
Cannot
Seize
May
Prudence
Great
Opposed
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
The difference between coarse and refined abuse is the difference between being bruised by a club and wounded by a poisoned arrow.
Samuel Johnson
The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.
Samuel Johnson
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
It is much easier not to write like a man than to write like a woman.
Samuel Johnson
Care that is once enter'd into the breast Will have the whole possession ere it rest.
Samuel Johnson
There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other. When speech is employed only as the vehicle of falsehood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave and seek prey only for himself.
Samuel Johnson
Wit is that which has been often thought, but never before was well expressed.
Samuel Johnson
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
Samuel Johnson
It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.
Samuel Johnson
Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past.
Samuel Johnson
Words become low by the occasions to which they are applied, or the general character of them who use them and the disgust which they produce arises from the revival of those images with which they are commonly united.
Samuel Johnson
All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.
Samuel Johnson
He that voluntarily continues in ignorance, is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces.
Samuel Johnson
Scarcely any degree of judgment is sufficient to restrain the imagination from magnifying that on which it is long detained
Samuel Johnson
It is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilised society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together.
Samuel Johnson
Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured.
Samuel Johnson
Riches seldom make their owners rich.
Samuel Johnson
The drama's laws the drama's patrons give. For we that live to please must please to live.
Samuel Johnson
Those who are in the power of evil habits must conquer them as they can and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be attained: but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by timely caution, preserve their freedom.
Samuel Johnson
Nothing is more common than for men to make partial and absurd distinctions between vices of equal enormity, and to observe some of the divine commands with great scrupulousness, while they violate others, equally important, without any concern, or the least apparent conciousness of guilt. Alas, it is only wisdom which perceives this tragedy.
Samuel Johnson
