Quote

Books have always a secret influence on the understanding we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas he that reads books of science, thogh without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing.

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
Cannot
Books
Ideas
Knowing
Obliterate
Book
Pleasure
Reads
Without
Secret
Improvement
Always
Understanding
Fixed
Knowledge
Grow
Desire
Influence
Science
Grows

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To wipe all tears from off all faces is a task too hard for mortals but to alleviate misfortunes is often within the most limited power: yet the opportunities which every day affords of relieving the most wretched of human beings are overlooked and neglected with equal disregard of policy and goodness.
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A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
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Babies do not want to hear about babies they like to be told of giants and castles.
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It is much easier not to write like a man than to write like a woman.
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The authors that in any nation last from age to age are very few, because there are very few that have any other claim to notice than that they catch hold on present curiosity, and gratify some accidental desire, or produce some temporary conveniency.
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Flattery pleases very generally. In the first place, the flatterer may think what he says to be true but, in the second place, whether he thinks so or not, he certainly thinks those whom he flatters of consequence enough to be flattered.
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The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay.
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There is a frightful interval between the seed and the timber.
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Your manuscript is both good and original but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
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Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim and when you are calculating, calculate.
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No one ever became great by imitation.
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Whatever advantage we snatch beyond a certain portion allotted us by at nature, is like money spent before it is due, which, at the time of regular payment, will be missed and regretted.
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Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us.
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Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity.
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Let him go abroad to a distant country let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.
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Your aspirations are your possibilities.
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Good-humor is a state between gayety and unconcern,--the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another.
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The wickedness of a loose or profane author is more atrocious than that of a giddy libertine or drunken ravisher, not only because it extends its effects wider, as a pestilence that taints the air is more destructive than poison infused in a draught, but because it is committed with cool deliberation.
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Misery is caused for the most part, not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the corrosion of less visible evils, which canker enjoyment, and undermine security. The visit of an invader is necessarily rare, but domestic animosities allow no cessation.
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Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals.
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