Quote

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.

Samuel Johnson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Thinking
Drive
Cowardice
Life
Sorry
Retiring
World
Pride
Retirement
Hate
Corner
Growl
Doe
Fellow
Bark
Come
Corners
Retire
Nothing
Philosophical
Retired
Think
Fellows
Laziness

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
Truth has no gradations nothing which admits of increase can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange. But if a proposition be true, there can be none more true.
Samuel Johnson
Image
There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Pleasure itself is not a vice
Samuel Johnson
Image
Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.
Samuel Johnson
Image
As long as one lives he will have need of repentance.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
Samuel Johnson
Image
To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I do not see, Sir, that it is reasonable for a man to be angry at another, whom a woman has preferred to him but angry he is, no doubt and he is loath to be angry at himself.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Want of tenderness is want of parts, and is no less a proof of stupidity than depravity.
Samuel Johnson
Image
There are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame.
Samuel Johnson
Image
There is a frightful interval between the seed and the timber.
Samuel Johnson
Image
To purchase Heaven has gold the power? Can gold remove the mortal hour? In life can love be bought with gold? Are friendship's pleasures to be sold? No--all that's worth a wish--a thought, Fair virtue gives unbribed, unbought. Cease then on trash thy hopes to bind, Let nobler views engage thy mind.
Samuel Johnson
Image
If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Words are but the signs of ideas.
Samuel Johnson
Image
If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Men become friends by a community of pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Nobody can be taught faster than he can learn.
Samuel Johnson