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We may have many acquaintances, but we can have but few friends this made Aristotle say that he that hath many friends hath none.

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
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Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
None
Friends
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Many
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Made
Aristotle
Acquaintance
Hath

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Fear naturally quickens the flight of guilt.
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Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he must study at Christ Church and All Souls.
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Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind, Obedient passions, and a will resigned
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I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.
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Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.
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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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To mean understandings, it is sufficient honour to be numbered amongst the lowest labourers of learning but different abilities must find different tasks. To hew stone, would have been unworthy of Palladio and to have rambled in search of shells and flowers, had but ill suited with the capacity of Newton.
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Irresolution and mutability are often the faults of men whose views are wide, and whose imagination is vigorous and excursive.
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Present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.
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No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius.
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There must always be some advantage on one side or the other, and it is better that advantage should be had by talents than by chance.
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Then with no throbs of fiery pain, No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain, And freed his soul the nearest way.
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Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.
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What I gained by being in France was learning to be better satisfied with my own country.
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The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.
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If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.
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Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding.
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Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.
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Sorrow is the mere rust of the soul. Activity will cleanse and brighten it.
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This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.
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