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As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Bookseller
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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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.
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How small of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place consigned, Our own felicity we make or find. With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.
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Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.
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I have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch and tumbling into it
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I have always said the first Whig was the Devil.
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A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, And touched nothing that he did not adorn.
Samuel Johnson
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Any of us would kill a cow rather than not have beef.
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It is however, reasonable, to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance towards it, though we know it never can be reached.
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Words become low by the occasions to which they are applied, or the general character of them who use them and the disgust which they produce arises from the revival of those images with which they are commonly united.
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Friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness and its permanence from the other.
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A woman of fortune being used the handling of money, spends it judiciously but a woman who gets the command of money for the first time upon her marriage, has such a gust in spending it, that she throws it away with great profusion.
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The belief of immortality is impressed upon all men, and all men act under an impression of it, however they may talk, and though, perhaps, they may be scarcely sensible of it.
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The arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration.
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When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.
Samuel Johnson
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This is my history like all other histories, a narrative of misery.
Samuel Johnson
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People seldom read a book which is given to them and few are given. The way to spread a work is to sell it at a low price. No man will send to buy a thing that costs even sixpence without an intention to read it.
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A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
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Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
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Never believe extraordinary characters which you hear of people. Depend upon it, they are exaggerated. You do not see one man shoot a great deal higher than another.
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The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.
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