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Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it.

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
Left
Firsts
Smoothing
First
Successors
Much
Dues
Way
Task
Broke
Tasks
Knowledge

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He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.
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Such is the constitution of Man that labor may be said to be its own re-ward.
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Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.
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These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.
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Most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them.
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I fly from pleasure, said the prince, because pleasure has ceased to please I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others.
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Pain is less subject than pleasure to careless expression.
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Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order. - John V. Lindsay No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.
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When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
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To be free it is not enough to beat the system, one must beat the system every day
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Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal.
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That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not only be equal virtue on each part, but virtue of the same kind not only the same end must be proposed, but the same means must be approved by both.
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An exotic and irrational entertainment.
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A man is not obliged honestly to answer a question which should not properly be put.
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Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.
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The whole of life is but keeping away the thoughts of death.
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Hunger is never delicate they who are seldom gorged to the full with praise may be safely fed with gross compliments, for the appetite must be satisfied before it is disgusted.
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To read, write, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters.
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To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which one of the Fathers observes to be not a virtue, but the groundwork of virtue.
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The care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature.
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