Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.
Samuel Johnson
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Pardon
Laughter
Rest
Company
Asks
Understand
Anything
Provokes
Provoking
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature.
Samuel Johnson
All imposture weakens confidence and chills benevolence.
Samuel Johnson
Wit is that which has been often thought, but never before was well expressed.
Samuel Johnson
The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.
Samuel Johnson
Nothing is more common than for men to make partial and absurd distinctions between vices of equal enormity, and to observe some of the divine commands with great scrupulousness, while they violate others, equally important, without any concern, or the least apparent conciousness of guilt. Alas, it is only wisdom which perceives this tragedy.
Samuel Johnson
I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
Samuel Johnson
Books without the knowledge of life are useless.
Samuel Johnson
I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom.
Samuel Johnson
There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.
Samuel Johnson
Ladies, stock and tend your hive, Trifle not at thirty-five For, howe'er we boast and strive, Life declines from thirty-five He that ever hopes to thrive Must begin by thirty-five.
Samuel Johnson
Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty, and of ease, and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health.
Samuel Johnson
Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.
Samuel Johnson
men do not suspect faults which they do not commit
Samuel Johnson
Profuseness is a cruel and crafty demon, that gradually involves her followers in dependence and debt that is, fetters them with irons that enter into their souls.
Samuel Johnson
Learn that the present hour alone is man's.
Samuel Johnson
Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation...to die is the fate of man but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.
Samuel Johnson
Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings.
Samuel Johnson
Political liberty is only good insofar as it produces private liberty.
Samuel Johnson
Wit will never make a man rich, but there are places where riches will always make a wit.
Samuel Johnson
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
Samuel Johnson