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Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge, and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things, when they are shown their form or told their use.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
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Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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Whole
Arrogance
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Knowledge
Familiarity
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Nature
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
People may be taken in once, who imagine that an author is greater in private life than other men.
Samuel Johnson
Life admits not of delays when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.
Samuel Johnson
Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument.
Samuel Johnson
One of the most pernicious effects of haste is obscurity.
Samuel Johnson
Justice is indispensably and universally necessary, and what is necessary must always be limited, uniform, and distinct
Samuel Johnson
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.
Samuel Johnson
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.
Samuel Johnson
Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is but it is not easy to tell what it is.
Samuel Johnson
Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.
Samuel Johnson
Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.
Samuel Johnson
There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.
Samuel Johnson
The lust of gold succeeds the rage of conquest The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless! The last corruption of degenerate man.
Samuel Johnson
The botanist looks upon the astronomer as a being unworthy of his regard and he that is glowing great and happy by electrifying a bottle wonders how the world can be engaged by trifling prattle about war and peace.
Samuel Johnson
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Samuel Johnson
It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy unenvied, to be healthful without physic, and secure without a guard to obtain from the bounty of nature, what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of artists and attendants, of flatterers and spies.
Samuel Johnson
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.
Samuel Johnson
This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.
Samuel Johnson
It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.
Samuel Johnson
Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.
Samuel Johnson
Those whose abilities or knowledge incline them most to deviate from the general round of life are recalled from eccentricity by the laws of their existence.
Samuel Johnson
