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The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
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Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Would
Criticism
Writer
Reading
Purpose
Read
Blown
Power
Pleasing
Must
Aside
Writing
Destroy
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience you will find it a calamity.
Samuel Johnson
I look upon this as I did upon the Dictionary: it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.
Samuel Johnson
Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.
Samuel Johnson
To mean understandings, it is sufficient honour to be numbered amongst the lowest labourers of learning but different abilities must find different tasks. To hew stone, would have been unworthy of Palladio and to have rambled in search of shells and flowers, had but ill suited with the capacity of Newton.
Samuel Johnson
A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down.
Samuel Johnson
Unless a woman has an amorous heart, she is a dull companion.
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
Remember that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity long continued will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible.
Samuel Johnson
Read the book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read.
Samuel Johnson
It is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. You may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learned them both.
Samuel Johnson
No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance.
Samuel Johnson
From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,- Path, motive, guide, original, and end.
Samuel Johnson
Advice is seldom welcome. Those who need it most, like it least.
Samuel Johnson
You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.
Samuel Johnson
A mere literary man is a dull man a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.
Samuel Johnson
Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
Samuel Johnson
Such is the constitution of Man that labor may be said to be its own re-ward.
Samuel Johnson
Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.
Samuel Johnson
It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend.
Samuel Johnson
To talk in public, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire and answer inquiries, is the business of the scholar
Samuel Johnson
