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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
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
Teacher
Translator
Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Power
Pleasing
Must
Aside
Writing
Destroy
Would
Criticism
Writer
Reading
Purpose
Read
Blown
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
The future is purchased by the present.
Samuel Johnson
Faction seldom leaves a man honest, however it might find him.
Samuel Johnson
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
Samuel Johnson
Whisky making is the art of making poison pleasant
Samuel Johnson
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.
Samuel Johnson
Condemned to Hope's delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts or slow decline Our social comforts drop away.
Samuel Johnson
A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.
Samuel Johnson
He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.
Samuel Johnson
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
Samuel Johnson
Discord generally operates in little things it is inflamed ... by contrariety of taste oftener than principles.
Samuel Johnson
I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.
Samuel Johnson
They make a rout about universal liberty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty.
Samuel Johnson
The truly strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.
Samuel Johnson
The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.
Samuel Johnson
Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is but it is not easy to tell what it is.
Samuel Johnson
Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity.
Samuel Johnson
By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen. I hope I see things from a greater distance.
Samuel Johnson
Nothing is more common than to find men, whose works are now totally neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries as the oracles of their age, and the legislators of science.
Samuel Johnson
If misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced if of ill-fortune, to be pitied and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced.
Samuel Johnson
Whatever is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity.
Samuel Johnson
