Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Modern writers are the moons of literature they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.
Samuel Johnson
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Book
Shine
Shining
Lovers
Writers
Moon
Moons
Modern
Ancients
Literature
Reflected
Light
Borrowed
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
As any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice.
Samuel Johnson
Language is the dress of thought and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy
Samuel Johnson
Misfortunes should always be expected.
Samuel Johnson
Life is but short no time can be afforded but for the indulgence of real sorry, or contests upon questions seriously momentous. Let us not throw away any of our days upon useless resentment, or contend who shall hold out longest in stubborn malignity. It is best not to be angry and best, in the next place, to be quickly reconciled.
Samuel Johnson
Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.
Samuel Johnson
Was ever poet so trusted before?
Samuel Johnson
There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.
Samuel Johnson
We ought not to raise expectations which it is not in our power to satisfy.-It is more pleasing to see smoke brightening into flame, than flame sinking into smoke.
Samuel Johnson
Love is only one of many passions.
Samuel Johnson
Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty, and of ease, and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health.
Samuel Johnson
Fear naturally quickens the flight of guilt.
Samuel Johnson
Dishonor waits on perfidy. A man should blush to think a falsehood it is the crime of cowards.
Samuel Johnson
Profuseness is a cruel and crafty demon, that gradually involves her followers in dependence and debt that is, fetters them with irons that enter into their souls.
Samuel Johnson
Those who have any intention of deviating from the beaten roads of life, and acquiring a reputation superior to names hourly swept away by time among the refuse of fame, should add to their reason and their spirit the power of persisting in their pur
Samuel Johnson
He that is pushing his predecessors into the gulf of obscurity, cannot but sometimes suspect, that he must himself sink in like manner, and, as he stands upon the same precipice, be swept away with the same violence.
Samuel Johnson
Memory is like all other human powers, with which no man can be satisfied who measures them by what he can conceive, or by what he can desire.
Samuel Johnson
Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.
Samuel Johnson
Such is the constitution of Man that labor may be said to be its own re-ward.
Samuel Johnson
I have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch and tumbling into it
Samuel Johnson
Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.
Samuel Johnson
