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A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Bookseller
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Babies do not want to hear about babies they like to be told of giants and castles.
Samuel Johnson
Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits the other recreates and revives them.
Samuel Johnson
Profuseness is a cruel and crafty demon, that gradually involves her followers in dependence and debt that is, fetters them with irons that enter into their souls.
Samuel Johnson
Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.
Samuel Johnson
So scanty is our present allowance of happiness that in many situations life could scarcely be supported if hope were not allowed to relieve the present hour by pleasures borrowed from the future.
Samuel Johnson
Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.
Samuel Johnson
Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.
Samuel Johnson
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
The expense is damnable, the position is ridiculous, and the pleasure fleeting.
Samuel Johnson
By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen. I hope I see things from a greater distance.
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
As a madman is apt to think himself grown suddenly great, so he that grows suddenly great is apt to borrow a little from the madman.
Samuel Johnson
Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.
Samuel Johnson
Glory, the casual gift of thoughtless crowds! Glory, the bribe of avaricious virtue!
Samuel Johnson
Every man that has felt pain knows how little all other comforts can gladden him to whom health is denied. Yet who is there does not sometimes hazard it for the enjoyment of an hour?
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
Such are the vicissitudes of the world, through all its parts, that day and night, labor and rest, hurry and retirement, endear each other such are the changes that keep the mind in action: we desire, we pursue, we obtain, we are satiated we desire something else and begin a new pursuit.
Samuel Johnson
Age is rarely despised but when it is, contemptible.
Samuel Johnson
It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called, by the generality of mankind, a particular genius.
Samuel Johnson
No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
