Quote

It is better a man should be abused than forgotten.

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
Abused
Abuse
Forgotten
Better
Men

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
Gaiety is to good-humor as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance. The one overpowers weak spirits, the other recreates and revives them. Gaiety seldom fails to give some pain good-humor boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Some claim a place in the list of patriots, by an acrimonious and unremitting opposition to the court. This mark is by no means infallible. Patriotism is not necessarily included in rebellion. A man may hate his king, yet not love his country.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn. [Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.]
Samuel Johnson
Image
We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Wretched un-idea'd girls.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Since every man is obliged to promote happiness and virtue, he should be careful not to mislead unwary minds, by appearing to set too high a value upon things by which no real excellence is conferred.
Samuel Johnson
Image
This is my history like all other histories, a narrative of misery.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Sir, there is no end of negative criticism.
Samuel Johnson
Image
We often need reminding even if we do not often need educating.
Samuel Johnson
Image
As pride sometimes is hid under humility, idleness if often covered by turbulence and hurry.
Samuel Johnson
Image
New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy, affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly the one completes a villain, the other only finishes a fop.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.
Samuel Johnson
Image
They make a rout about universal liberty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty.
Samuel Johnson
Image
In Shakespeare's plays, the mourner hastening to bury his friend is all the time colliding with the reveller hastening to his wine.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Nothing is more common than for men to make partial and absurd distinctions between vices of equal enormity, and to observe some of the divine commands with great scrupulousness, while they violate others, equally important, without any concern, or the least apparent conciousness of guilt. Alas, it is only wisdom which perceives this tragedy.
Samuel Johnson