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If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still

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
Life
Stand
Business
Death
Stills
Still
Would
Think
Thinking
Constantly

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Why, sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, Sir, is not in Nature.
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What is the reason that women servants ... have much lower wages than men servants ... when in fact our female house servants work much harder than the male?
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Sir, it is wrong to stir up law-suits but when once it is certain that a law-suit is to go on, there is nothing wrong in a lawyer's endeavouring that he shall have the benefit, rather than another.
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There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other. When speech is employed only as the vehicle of falsehood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave and seek prey only for himself.
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As pride sometimes is hid under humility, idleness if often covered by turbulence and hurry.
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A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company
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To a poet nothing can be useless.
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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.
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The faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are more dangerous, because the influence of his example is more extensive and the interest of learning requires that they should be discovered and stigmatized, before they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, and become precedents of indisputable authority.
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It is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. You may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learned them both.
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Inquiries into the heart are not for man.
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No man likes to live under the eye of perpetual disapprobation.
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Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding can expect only to improve a single science.
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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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None are happy but by anticipation of change.
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Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
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There is a frightful interval between the seed and the timber.
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Commerce can never be at a stop while one man wants what another can supply and credit will never be denied, while it is likely to be repaid with profit.
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Every man has something to do which he neglects, every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat.
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