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Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Fire
Propagate
Knowledge
Kindled
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Afterwards
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External
Must
Agents
Always
Desires
Like
Increase

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Luxury, so far as it reaches the people, will do good to the race of people it will strengthen and multiply them. Sir, no nation was ever hurt by luxury for, as I said before it can reach but a very few.
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I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
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An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty.
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No man sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity.
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Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults.
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When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
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The process is the reality.
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Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.
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A cow is a very good animal in the field but we turn her out of a garden.
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He that applauds him who does not deserve praise, is endeavoring to deceive the public he that hisses in malice or sport, is an oppressor and a robber.
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He who endeavors to please must appear pleased.
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Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.
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No man tells his opinion so freely as when he imagines it received with implicit veneration.
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Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.
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Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
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There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.
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When we see our enemies and friends gliding away before us, let us not forget that we are subject to the general law of mortality, and shall soon be where our doom will be fixed forever.
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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?
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