Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Nothing can be truly great which is not right.
Samuel Johnson
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Truly
Nothing
Right
Great
Fairness
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.
Samuel Johnson
Riches, perhaps, do not so often produce crimes as incite accusers.
Samuel Johnson
There is ... scarcely any species of writing of which we can tell what is its essence, and what are its constituents every new genius produces some innovation, which, when invented and approved, subverts the rules which the practice of foregoing authors had established.
Samuel Johnson
They who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it.
Samuel Johnson
The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment.
Samuel Johnson
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
Samuel Johnson
When we see our enemies and friends gliding away before us, let us not forget that we are subject to the general law of mortality, and shall soon be where our doom will be fixed forever.
Samuel Johnson
To excite opposition and inflame malevolence is the unhappy privilege of courage made arrogant by consciousness of strength.
Samuel Johnson
As the faculty of writing has chiefly been a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has always been thrown upon the women.
Samuel Johnson
While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
Samuel Johnson
No one will persist long in helping someone who will not help themselves.
Samuel Johnson
Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.
Samuel Johnson
To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
The whole power of cunning is privative to say nothing, and to do nothing , is the utmost of its reach. Yet men, thus narrow by nature and mean by art, are sometimes able to rise by the miscarriages of bravery and the openness of integrity, and, watching failures and snatching opportunities, obtain advantages which belong to higher characters.
Samuel Johnson
Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.
Samuel Johnson
Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet. From those sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we do not easily receive strong impressions, or delightful images and words to which we are nearly strangers, whenever they occur, draw that attention on themselves which they should transmit to other things.
Samuel Johnson
Large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most common topics of falsehood.
Samuel Johnson
Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.
Samuel Johnson
Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.
Samuel Johnson
Every man, however hopeless his pretensions may appear, has some project by which he hopes to rise to reputation some art by which he imagines that the attention of the world will be attracted some quality, good or bad, which discriminates him from the common herd of mortals, and by which others may be persuaded to love, or compelled to fear him.
Samuel Johnson
