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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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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
A fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot.
Samuel Johnson
What is said upon a subject is gathered from an hundred people.
Samuel Johnson
Large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most common topics of falsehood.
Samuel Johnson
In order that all men might be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
Samuel Johnson
To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.
Samuel Johnson
You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.
Samuel Johnson
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.
Samuel Johnson
I am a hardened and shameless tea drinker, who has, for twenty years, diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant whose kettle has scarcely time to cool who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and, with tea, welcomes the morning.
Samuel Johnson
It seems to be remarkable that death increases our veneration for the good, and extenuates our hatred for the bad.
Samuel Johnson
He that resigns his peace to little casualties, and suffers the course of his life to be interrupted for fortuitous inadvertencies or offences, delivers up himself to the direction of the wind, and loses all that constancy and equanimity which constitutes the chief praise of a wise man.
Samuel Johnson
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
No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.
Samuel Johnson
All power of fancy over reason is a degree of madness.
Samuel Johnson
Some people wave their dogmatic thinking until their own reason is entangled.
Samuel Johnson
Quotation is a good thing, there is a community of thought in it.
Samuel Johnson
I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.
Samuel Johnson
We often need reminding even if we do not often need educating.
Samuel Johnson
There must always be some advantage on one side or the other, and it is better that advantage should be had by talents than by chance.
Samuel Johnson
Those that have done nothing in life, are not qualified to judge of those that have done little
Samuel Johnson
The eye of the mind, like that of the body, can only extend its view to new objects, by losing sight of those which are now before it.
Samuel Johnson
