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The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species to remark general properties and large appearances.
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
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge.
Samuel Johnson
So scanty is our present allowance of happiness that in many situations life could scarcely be supported if hope were not allowed to relieve the present hour by pleasures borrowed from the future.
Samuel Johnson
Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from time to come.
Samuel Johnson
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
Samuel Johnson
He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed. The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich.
Samuel Johnson
A merchant may, perhaps, be a man of an enlarged mind, but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind.
Samuel Johnson
We all live upon the hope of pleasing somebody, and the pleasure of pleasing ought to be greatest, and at last always will be greatest, when our endeavours are exerted in consequence of our duty.
Samuel Johnson
Life protracted is protracted woe.
Samuel Johnson
The care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature.
Samuel Johnson
Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
Samuel Johnson
There are certain topicks which are never exhausted. Of some images and sentiments the mind of man may be said to be enamoured it meets them, however often they occur, with the same ardour which a lover feels at the sight of his mistress, and parts from them with the same regret when they can no longer be enjoyed.
Samuel Johnson
Round numbers are always false.
Samuel Johnson
You never find people laboring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful income.
Samuel Johnson
There are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame.
Samuel Johnson
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Samuel Johnson
A lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.
Samuel Johnson
Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.
Samuel Johnson
Misfortunes should always be expected.
Samuel Johnson
Domestic discord is not inevitably and fatally necessary but yet it is not easy to avoid.
Samuel Johnson
London! the needy villain's general home, The common sewer of Paris and of Rome! With eager thirst, by folly or by fate, Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state.
Samuel Johnson
