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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
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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
Trying
Attempting
Men
Wit
Leap
Hearing
Speech
Failing
Seeing
Tumbling
Pleasure
Ditch
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
Samuel Johnson
Foppery is never cured it is the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, are never rectified once a coxcomb always a coxcomb.
Samuel Johnson
It is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife.
Samuel Johnson
That observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good.
Samuel Johnson
What is the reason that women servants ... have much lower wages than men servants ... when in fact our female house servants work much harder than the male?
Samuel Johnson
He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.
Samuel Johnson
Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears.
Samuel Johnson
What is twice read is commonly better remembered that what is transcribed.
Samuel Johnson
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
Samuel Johnson
All industry must be excited by hope.
Samuel Johnson
I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning, for that is sure good. I would let him at first read any English book which happens to engage his attention because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He'll get better books afterwards.
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
[The poet] must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.
Samuel Johnson
Such is the constitution of Man that labor may be said to be its own re-ward.
Samuel Johnson
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.
Samuel Johnson
Everybody loves to have things which please the palate put in their way, without trouble or preparation.
Samuel Johnson
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Samuel Johnson
When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.
Samuel Johnson
I believe it will be found that those who marry late are best pleased with their children and those who marry early, with their partners.
Samuel Johnson
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
