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One of the amusements of idleness is reading without fatigue of close attention and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.
Samuel Johnson
When two Eglishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.
Samuel Johnson
If we will have the kindness of others, we must endure their follies.
Samuel Johnson
Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.
Samuel Johnson
You raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument.
Samuel Johnson
The gloomy and the resentful are always found among those who have nothing to do or who do nothing.
Samuel Johnson
Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it
Samuel Johnson
Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured.
Samuel Johnson
Everybody loves to have things which please the palate put in their way, without trouble or preparation.
Samuel Johnson
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
Samuel Johnson
The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species to remark general properties and large appearances.
Samuel Johnson
It is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife.
Samuel Johnson
It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
Samuel Johnson
The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.
Samuel Johnson
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
Samuel Johnson
Every man may be observed to have a certain strain of lamentation, some peculiar theme of complaint on which he dwells in his moments of dejection.
Samuel Johnson
Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.
Samuel Johnson
There is no book so poor that it would not be a prodigy if wholly made by a single man.
Samuel Johnson
Poetry cannot be translation
Samuel Johnson
He that never thinks can never be wise.
Samuel Johnson
