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An Englishman is content to say nothing when he has nothing to say.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Literary Critic
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
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Englishmen
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Modern writers are the moons of literature they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.
Samuel Johnson
Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.
Samuel Johnson
The perfect day for quitting is not real. It will never come, so might as well start today
Samuel Johnson
Pope had been flattered till he thought himself one of the moving powers of the system of life. When he talked of laying down his pen, those who sat round him intreated and implored and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they went away and laughed.
Samuel Johnson
Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.
Samuel Johnson
Friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness and its permanence from the other.
Samuel Johnson
Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself.
Samuel Johnson
[The poet] must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.
Samuel Johnson
You think I love flattery (says Dr. Johnson), and so I do but a little too much always disgusts me: that fellow Richardson, on the contrary, could not be contented to sail quietly down the stream of reputation, without longing to taste the froth from every stroke of the oar.
Samuel Johnson
A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists without any practical regard to morals and religion he may be learning not to live but to reason... while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed.
Samuel Johnson
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
Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.
Samuel Johnson
No wonder, Sir, that he is vain a man who is perpetually flattered in every mode that can be conceived. So many bellows have blown the fire, that one wonders he is not by this time become a cinder.
Samuel Johnson
Men become friends by a community of pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
Everybody loves to have things which please the palate put in their way, without trouble or preparation.
Samuel Johnson
It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.
Samuel Johnson
It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous.
Samuel Johnson
While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
Samuel Johnson
At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
Samuel Johnson
Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.
Samuel Johnson
