Quote

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

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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
Reading
Seldom
Words
Complaining
Cannot
Sentences
Complains
Book
Understood
Deficiency
Hard
Grows
Reads
Books
Suspects
Written
Obscure
Asks
Wiser

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Life of Ages, richly poured, Love of God unspent and free, Flowing in the Prophet's word And the People's liberty! Never was to chosen race That unstinted tide confined Thine is every time and place, Fountain sweet of heart and mind!
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Occupation alone is happiness.
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The coquette has companions, indeed, but no lovers,--for love is respectful and timorous and where among her followers will she find a husband?
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The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
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To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.
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When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
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Hope is necessary in every condition.
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A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.
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Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.
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Language is the dress of thought and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy
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Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
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I soon found that wit, like every other power, has its boundaries that its success depends upon the aptitude of others to receive impressions and that as some bodies, indissoluble by heat, can set the furnace and crucible at defiance, there are min
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Men become friends by a community of pleasures.
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A good wife is like the ivy which beautifies the building to which it clings, twining its tendrils more lovingly as time converts the ancient edifice into a ruin.
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There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.
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Nothing is more common than to find men, whose works are now totally neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries as the oracles of their age, and the legislators of science.
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Inquiries into the heart are not for man.
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The perfect day for quitting is not real. It will never come, so might as well start today
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