Quote

Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion.

Samuel Johnson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Kind
Motion
Putrefaction
Life
Sorrow
Scour
Exercise
Remedied
Idea
Contributes
Away
Stagnant
Soul
Rust
Ideas
Passage
Every
Passages

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
That all who are happy are equally happy is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. A small drinking glass and a large one may be equally full, but the large one holds more than the small.
Samuel Johnson
Image
A person loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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
Image
Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.
Samuel Johnson
Image
But to the particular species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and emulation.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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
Image
A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.
Samuel Johnson
Image
These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Though it is evident, that not more than one age or people can deserve the censure of being more averse from learning than any other, yet at all times knowledge must have encountered impediments, and wit been mortified with contempt, or harassed with persecution.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Few of those who fill the world with books, have any pretensions to the hope either of pleasing or instructing. They have often no other task than to lay two books before them, out of which they compile a third, without any new material of their own, and with very little application of judgment to those which former authors have supplied.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Occupation alone is happiness.
Samuel Johnson
Image
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Nobody can be taught faster than he can learn.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Among the calamities of war may be numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim and when you are calculating, calculate.
Samuel Johnson
Image
No one ever became great by imitation.
Samuel Johnson
Image
He who is extravagant will quickly become poor and poverty will enforce dependence, and invite corruption.
Samuel Johnson