Quote

All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.

Samuel Johnson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Effects
Wonder
Novelty
Effect
Ignorance

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
Some claim a place in the list of patriots, by an acrimonious and unremitting opposition to the court. This mark is by no means infallible. Patriotism is not necessarily included in rebellion. A man may hate his king, yet not love his country.
Samuel Johnson
Image
To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind, because their preference was made without, a comparison but it has never been my fortune to find, either in ancient or modern writers, any honourable mention of those, who have, with equal blindness, hated their country.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Whoever commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him who he deceives, but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society.
Samuel Johnson
Image
In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Scarcely any degree of judgment is sufficient to restrain the imagination from magnifying that on which it is long detained
Samuel Johnson
Image
Spite and ill-nature are among the most expensive luxuries in life.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Poetry cannot be translation
Samuel Johnson
Image
Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves
Samuel Johnson
Image
We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
Samuel Johnson
Image
That man is never happy for the present is so true, that all his relief from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little while. Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
Samuel Johnson
Image
He that never thinks can never be wise.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The uniform necessities of human nature produce in a great measure uniformity of life, and for part of the day make one place like another to dress and to undress, to eat and to sleep, are the same in London as in the country.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Pension: An allowance made to anyone without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.
Samuel Johnson
Image
We often need reminding even if we do not often need educating.
Samuel Johnson
Image
No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.
Samuel Johnson
Image
But to the particular species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and emulation.
Samuel Johnson
Image
There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?
Samuel Johnson
Image
To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.
Samuel Johnson