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

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Attack is the reaction. I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds.
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Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.
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To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
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It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence.
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People seldom read a book which is given to them and few are given. The way to spread a work is to sell it at a low price. No man will send to buy a thing that costs even sixpence without an intention to read it.
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To read, write, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters.
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It is much easier not to write like a man than to write like a woman.
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He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.
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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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Every man may be observed to have a certain strain of lamentation, some peculiar theme of complaint on which he dwells in his moments of dejection.
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So different are the colors of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.
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Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss.
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It is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife.
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Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know That life protracted is protracted woe.
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To talk in public, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire and answer inquiries, is the business of the scholar
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He that would travel for the entertainment of others should remember that the great object of remark is human life.
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Every reader should remember the diffidence of Socrates, and repair by his candour the injuries of time: he should impute the seeming defects of his author to some chasm of intelligence, and suppose that the sense which is now weak was once forcible
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It is indeed certain, that whoever attempts any common topick, will find unexpected coincidences of his thoughts with those of other writers nor can the nicest judgment always distinguish accidental similitude from artful imitation.
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A fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot.
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That eminence of learning is not to be gained without labour, at least equal to that which any other kind of greatness can require, will be allowed by those who wish to elevate the character of a scholar since they cannot but know that every human acquisition is valuable in proportion to the difficulty of its attainment.
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