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Modern writers are the moons of literature they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits the other recreates and revives them.
Samuel Johnson
Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it.
Samuel Johnson
Those who are in the power of evil habits must conquer them as they can and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be attained: but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by timely caution, preserve their freedom.
Samuel Johnson
There is no idleness, by which we are so easily seduced, as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business, and by making the loiterer imagine that he has something to do which must not be neglected, keeps him in perpetual agitation, and hurries him rapidly from place to place.
Samuel Johnson
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef love, like being enlivened with champagne.
Samuel Johnson
Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.
Samuel Johnson
Your aspirations are your possibilities.
Samuel Johnson
As the faculty of writing has chiefly been a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has always been thrown upon the women.
Samuel Johnson
Try and forget our cares and sickness, and contribute, as we can to the happiness of each other.
Samuel Johnson
What is twice read is commonly better remembered that what is transcribed.
Samuel Johnson
In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence.
Samuel Johnson
An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature.
Samuel Johnson
Reason elevates our thoughts as high as the stars, and leads us through the vast space of this mighty fabric yet it comes far short of the real extent of our corporeal being.
Samuel Johnson
Age is rarely despised but when it is, contemptible.
Samuel Johnson
It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.
Samuel Johnson
Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.
Samuel Johnson
Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it
Samuel Johnson
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.
Samuel Johnson
Fate wings, with every wish, the afflictive dart, Each gift of nature, and each grace of art.
Samuel Johnson
You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.
Samuel Johnson
