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I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.

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
Losing
Heaven
Forget
Words
Lexicographer
Lost
Daughters
Art
Sons
Earth
Son
Things
Daughter

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A man of sense and education should meet a suitable companion in a wife. It is a miserable thing when the conversation can only be such as whether the mutton should be boiled or roasted, and probably a dispute about that.
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Read over your compositions and whenever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
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In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry.
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He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience. We have always protected the Americans we may therefore subject them to government.
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It is however, reasonable, to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance towards it, though we know it never can be reached.
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One of the most pernicious effects of haste is obscurity.
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The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.
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Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from time to come.
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No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
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Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.
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There must always be some advantage on one side or the other, and it is better that advantage should be had by talents than by chance.
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The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.
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Of riches it is not necessary to write the praise. Let it, however, be remembered that he who has money to spare has it always in his power to benefit others, and of such power a good man must always be desirous.
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Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
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Happiness is enjoyed only in proportion as it is known and such is the state or folly of man, that it is known only by experience of its contrary.
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We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor
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Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.
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Misfortunes should always be expected.
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Good-humor is a state between gayety and unconcern,--the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another.
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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.
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