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Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
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
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
I am a friend to subordination, as most conducive to the happiness of society. There is a reciprocal pleasure in governing and being governed.
Samuel Johnson
Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn. [Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.]
Samuel Johnson
The heroes of literary history have been no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved.
Samuel Johnson
Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use.
Samuel Johnson
A fallible being will fail somewhere.
Samuel Johnson
Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance.
Samuel Johnson
When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.
Samuel Johnson
Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do.
Samuel Johnson
We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
Samuel Johnson
The insolence of wealth will creep out.
Samuel Johnson
You cannot give me an instance of any man who is permitted to lay out his own time contriving not to have tedious hours.
Samuel Johnson
There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
Samuel Johnson
One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
Samuel Johnson
Books, says Lord Bacon, can never teach us the use of books the student must learn by commerce with mankind to reduce his speculations to practice. No man should think so highly of himself as to think he can receive but little light from books no one so meanly, as to believe he can discover nothing but what is to be learned from them.
Samuel Johnson
Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.
Samuel Johnson
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
It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.
Samuel Johnson
Friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness and its permanence from the other.
Samuel Johnson
All imposture weakens confidence and chills benevolence.
Samuel Johnson
It is better a man should be abused than forgotten.
Samuel Johnson
