Quote

I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.

Samuel Johnson

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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
Little
Empty
Apathy
Work
Therefore
Wished
Protracted
Please
Grave
Miscarriage
Sound
Indifference
Frigid
Success
Graves
Sunk
Hope
Till
Tranquillity
Fear
Sounds
Dismiss
Littles
Praise
Censure

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There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets.
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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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I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning, for that is sure good. I would let him at first read any English book which happens to engage his attention because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He'll get better books afterwards.
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Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from time to come.
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When the eye or the imagination is struck with an uncommon work, the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was performed
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Virtue is too often merely local.
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Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.
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No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance, or to extinguish the desire of fond endearments and tender officiousness and, therefore, no one should think it unnecessary to learn those arts by which friendship may be gained.
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Commerce can never be at a stop while one man wants what another can supply and credit will never be denied, while it is likely to be repaid with profit.
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A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries.
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The complaint, therefore, that all topicks are preoccupied, is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness, by which some discourage others, and some themselves the mutability of mankind will always furnish writers with new images, and the luxuriance of fancy may always embellish them with new decorations.
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Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious.
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Among the calamities of war may be numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.
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It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous.
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The mental disease of the present generation is impatience of study, contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, and a disposition to rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity.
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A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.
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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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Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions
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All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.
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Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.
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