Quote

None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence.

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
Worry
Cannot
Things
Worries
None
Fool
Influence

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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
Image
No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Reason elevates our thoughts as high as the stars, and leads us through the vast space of this mighty fabric yet it comes far short of the real extent of our corporeal being.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Shakespeare never had more than 6 lines together without a fault.
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
One of the amusements of idleness is reading without fatigue of close attention and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read.
Samuel Johnson
Image
He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Philosophy has often attempted to repress insolence by asserting that all conditions are leveled by death a position which, however it may defect the happy, will seldom afford much comfort to the wretched.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Curiosity, like all other desires, produces pain as well as pleasure.
Samuel Johnson
Image
In my early years I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Women have two weapons - cosmetics and tears
Samuel Johnson
Image
When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.
Samuel Johnson
Image
None can be pleased without praise, and few can be praised without falsehood.
Samuel Johnson
Image
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Language is the dress of thought and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy
Samuel Johnson
Image
A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Advice is offensive, it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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