Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in a few words.
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
Expression
Aphorism
Words
Comprehension
Truth
Sentiment
Much
Sentiments
Consists
Rare
Excellence
Aphorisms
Useful
Abstruse
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
The king who makes war on his enemies tenderly distresses his subjects most cruelly.
Samuel Johnson
Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?
Samuel Johnson
There is a certain race of men that either imagine it their duty, or make it their amusement, to hinder the reception of every work of learning or genius, who stand as sentinels in the avenues of fame, and value themselves upon giving Ignorance and Envy the first notice of a prey.
Samuel Johnson
It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.
Samuel Johnson
Slavery is now nowhere more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.
Samuel Johnson
The wickedness of a loose or profane author is more atrocious than that of a giddy libertine or drunken ravisher, not only because it extends its effects wider, as a pestilence that taints the air is more destructive than poison infused in a draught, but because it is committed with cool deliberation.
Samuel Johnson
Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves.
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
All is not gold that glitters, as we have often been told and the adage is verified in your place and my favour but if what happens does not make us richer, we must bid it welcome, if it makes us wiser.
Samuel Johnson
Hope is necessary in every condition.
Samuel Johnson
Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate inquiry whether it is right.
Samuel Johnson
Life admits not of delays when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.
Samuel Johnson
This world, where much is to be done and little to be known.
Samuel Johnson
Faction seldom leaves a man honest, however it might find him.
Samuel Johnson
What I gained by being in France was learning to be better satisfied with my own country.
Samuel Johnson
To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.
Samuel Johnson
Luxury, so far as it reaches the people, will do good to the race of people it will strengthen and multiply them. Sir, no nation was ever hurt by luxury for, as I said before it can reach but a very few.
Samuel Johnson
Where there is emulation, there will be vanity where there is vanity, there will be folly.
Samuel Johnson
Study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves
Samuel Johnson
Sir, it is wrong to stir up law-suits but when once it is certain that a law-suit is to go on, there is nothing wrong in a lawyer's endeavouring that he shall have the benefit, rather than another.
Samuel Johnson
