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Few things are so liberally bestowed, or squandered with so little effect, as good advice.

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
Bestowed
Effect
Advice
Effects
Littles
Little
Good
Liberally
Things
Squandered

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.
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Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.
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No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.
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Unintelligible language is a lantern without a light.
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Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.
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It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.
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No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library for who can see the wall crowded on every side by mighty volumes, the works of laborious meditations and accurate inquiry, now scarcely known but by the catalogue.
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Condemned to Hope's delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts or slow decline Our social comforts drop away.
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It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
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Every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.
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Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.
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Apologies are seldom of any use.
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When two Eglishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.
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Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.
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He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.
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In a Man's Letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirrour of his breast.
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Those who will not take the trouble to think for themselves, have always somebody that thinks for them and the difficulty in writing is to please those from whom others learn to be pleased.
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All truth is valuable, and satirical criticism may be considered as useful when it rectifies error and improves judgment he that refines the public taste is a public benefactor.
Samuel Johnson
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I look upon this as I did upon the Dictionary: it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.
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The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
Samuel Johnson