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Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.

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
Wish
Cannot
Every
Always
Men
Cunning
Wishes
Wise
Almost

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He that never thinks can never be wise.
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I soon found that wit, like every other power, has its boundaries that its success depends upon the aptitude of others to receive impressions and that as some bodies, indissoluble by heat, can set the furnace and crucible at defiance, there are min
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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.
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Scarcely any degree of judgment is sufficient to restrain the imagination from magnifying that on which it is long detained
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The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside
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Read over your compositions and whenever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
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You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.
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The future is bought with the present.
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We may have uneasy feelings for seeing a creature in distress without pity for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them.
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The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.
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There is no book so poor that it would not be a prodigy if wholly made by a single man.
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The great effect of friendship is beneficence, yet by the first act of uncommon kindness it is endangered.
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I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.
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Sorrow is the mere rust of the soul. Activity will cleanse and brighten it.
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Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
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We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
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Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words.
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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.
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Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion.
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Every other enjoyment malice may destroy every other panegyric envy may withhold but no human power can deprive the boaster of his own encomiums.
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