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Trust as little as you can to report, and examine all you can by your own senses.

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
Examine
Report
Reports
Senses
Trust
Littles

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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The mere power of saving what is already in our hands must be of easy acquisition to every mind and as the example of Lord Bacon may show that the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a thousand instances every day prove that the humblest may practise it with success.
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Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.
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Nothing has tended more to retard the advancement of science than the disposition in vulgar minds to vilify what they cannot comprehend.
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About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.
Samuel Johnson
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Condemned to Hope's delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts or slow decline Our social comforts drop away.
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.
Samuel Johnson
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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
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Laws teach us to know when we commit injury and when we suffer it.
Samuel Johnson
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What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.
Samuel Johnson
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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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We must consider how very little history there is--I mean real, authentic history. That certain kings reigned and certain battles were fought, we can depend upon as true but all the coloring, all the philosophy, of history is conjecture.
Samuel Johnson
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My dear friend, clear your mind of can't.
Samuel Johnson
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There are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame.
Samuel Johnson
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The process is the reality.
Samuel Johnson
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None are happy but by anticipation of change.
Samuel Johnson
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Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.
Samuel Johnson
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The truly strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.
Samuel Johnson
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The mind is refrigerated by interruption the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject the reader is weary, he suspects not why and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied.
Samuel Johnson
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He who praises everybody, praises nobody.
Samuel Johnson
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Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity.
Samuel Johnson