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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
Leap
Hearing
Speech
Failing
Seeing
Tumbling
Pleasure
Ditch
Trying
Attempting
Men
Wit

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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Few have abilities so much needed by the rest of the world as to be caressed on their own terms and he that will not condescend to recommend himself by external embellishments must submit to the fate of just sentiment meanly expressed, and be ridiculed and forgotten before he is understood.
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Women have two weapons - cosmetics and tears
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He that is pushing his predecessors into the gulf of obscurity, cannot but sometimes suspect, that he must himself sink in like manner, and, as he stands upon the same precipice, be swept away with the same violence.
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Misfortunes should always be expected.
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Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.
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We have now learned that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking credit let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily restrained from giving it.
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Friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness and its permanence from the other.
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Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
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Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter.
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Falsehood always endeavors to copy the mien and attitude of truth.
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I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
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Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.
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When a man feel the reprehension of a friend seconded by his own heart, he is easily heated into resentment.
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Among the calamities of war may be numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.
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He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.
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In civilized society external advantages make us more respected. A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one. You may analyze this and say, What is there in it? But that will avail you nothing, for it is a part of a general system.
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Language is the dress of thought and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy
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Very few live by choice. Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not always willingly cooperate and therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his own.
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The care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature.
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There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.
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