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The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another and each labors first to impose upon himself and then to propagate the imposture.

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
First
Lovers
Eloquence
Time
Ambition
Impose
Criticism
Sensibility
Labor
Superior
Imposture
Upon
Superiors
Disposes
Art
Arts
Propagate
Another
Receive
Labors
Firsts
Communicate
Rapture

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A fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot.
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It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.
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I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
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The future is bought with the present.
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Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
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The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.
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You never find people laboring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful income.
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All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.
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He that never labors may know the pains of idleness, but not the pleasures.
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Example is always more efficacious than precept.
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Pound St. Paul's Church into atoms, and consider any single atom it is to be sure, good for nothing but put all these atoms together, and you have St. Paul's Church. So it is with human felicity, which is made up of many ingredients, each of which may be shown to be very insignificant.
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Justice is indispensably and universally necessary, and what is necessary must always be limited, uniform, and distinct
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The richest author that ever grazed the common of literature.
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Nature never gives everything at once.
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Scarcely any degree of judgment is sufficient to restrain the imagination from magnifying that on which it is long detained
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A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries.
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Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.
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