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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
Politician
Teacher
Translator
Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Mind
Shown
Things
Minds
Inactive
Told
Confound
Knowledge
Familiarity
Use
Conceive
Nature
Informed
Form
Vulgar
Whole
Arrogance
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.
Samuel Johnson
I will take no more physick, not even my opiates for I have prayed that I may render up my soul to God unclouded.
Samuel Johnson
Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of the spring: no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of the Nile.
Samuel Johnson
He who praises everybody, praises nobody.
Samuel Johnson
People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.
Samuel Johnson
Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.
Samuel Johnson
I wish you would add an index rerum, that when the reader recollects any incident he may easily find it.
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
The poor and the busy have no leisure for sentimental sorrow.
Samuel Johnson
Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.
Samuel Johnson
While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
Samuel Johnson
Though the discoveries or acquisitions of man are not always adequate to the expectations of his pride, they are at least sufficient to animate his industry.
Samuel Johnson
Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss.
Samuel Johnson
The mathematicians are well acquainted with the difference between pure science, which has only to do with ideas, and the application of its laws to the use of life, in which they are constrained to submit to the imperfections of matter and the influence of accidents.
Samuel Johnson
In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.
Samuel Johnson
A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them.
Samuel Johnson
Scarce any man becomes eminently disagreeable but by a departure from his real character, and an attempt at something for which nature or education has left him unqualified.
Samuel Johnson
A soldier's time is passed in distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption.
Samuel Johnson
They who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it.
Samuel Johnson
Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding can expect only to improve a single science.
Samuel Johnson
