Quote

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

Samuel Johnson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Clear
Proved
Makes
Plain
Money
Pounds
True
Doctrine
Two
False
Years
Prove
Hundred
Year
Doctrines

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
Since every man is obliged to promote happiness and virtue, he should be careful not to mislead unwary minds, by appearing to set too high a value upon things by which no real excellence is conferred.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from time to come.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves.
Samuel Johnson
Image
We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable.
Samuel Johnson
Image
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
Samuel Johnson
Image
All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Pension: An allowance made to anyone without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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
Image
It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Every man, however hopeless his pretensions may appear, has some project by which he hopes to rise to reputation some art by which he imagines that the attention of the world will be attracted some quality, good or bad, which discriminates him from the common herd of mortals, and by which others may be persuaded to love, or compelled to fear him.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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
Image
Gaiety is to good-humor as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance. The one overpowers weak spirits, the other recreates and revives them. Gaiety seldom fails to give some pain good-humor boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending.
Samuel Johnson
Image
There must always be some advantage on one side or the other, and it is better that advantage should be had by talents than by chance.
Samuel Johnson
Image
You think I love flattery (says Dr. Johnson), and so I do but a little too much always disgusts me: that fellow Richardson, on the contrary, could not be contented to sail quietly down the stream of reputation, without longing to taste the froth from every stroke of the oar.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.
Samuel Johnson
Image
People may be taken in once, who imagine that an author is greater in private life than other men.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The friendship which is to be practised or expected by common mortals, must take its rise from mutual pleasure, and must end when the power ceases of delighting each other.
Samuel Johnson
Image
We ought not to raise expectations which it is not in our power to satisfy.-It is more pleasing to see smoke brightening into flame, than flame sinking into smoke.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The complaint, therefore, that all topicks are preoccupied, is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness, by which some discourage others, and some themselves the mutability of mankind will always furnish writers with new images, and the luxuriance of fancy may always embellish them with new decorations.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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