Quote

This world, where much is to be done and little to be known.

Samuel Johnson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Done
Much
World
Known
Littles

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
A soldier's time is passed in distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves
Samuel Johnson
Image
Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.
Samuel Johnson
Image
There is not, perhaps, to a mind well instructed, a more painful occurrence, than the death of one we have injured without reparation.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Our aspirations are our possibilities.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Wheresoe'er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new: Endless labor all along, Endless labor to be wrong: Phrase that Time has flung away Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Yet reason frowns in war's unequal game, Where wasted nations raise a single name And mortgag'd states their grandsire's wreaths regret, From age to age in everlasting debt Wreaths which at last the dear-bought right convey To rust on medals, or on stones decay.
Samuel Johnson
Image
A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The highest panegyric, therefore, that private virtue can receive, is the praise of servants.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Luxury, so far as it reaches the people, will do good to the race of people it will strengthen and multiply them. Sir, no nation was ever hurt by luxury for, as I said before it can reach but a very few.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The size of a man's understanding might always be justly measured by his mirth.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Life admits not of delays when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.
Samuel Johnson
Image
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The great effect of friendship is beneficence, yet by the first act of uncommon kindness it is endangered.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The whole of life is but keeping away the thoughts of death.
Samuel Johnson
Image
An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Every man may be observed to have a certain strain of lamentation, some peculiar theme of complaint on which he dwells in his moments of dejection.
Samuel Johnson
Image
That man is never happy for the present is so true, that all his relief from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little while. Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Applause abates diligence.
Samuel Johnson