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Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavors, by showing what has already been performed.
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
May
Showing
Timidity
Without
Endeavor
Endeavors
Overcome
Faint
Overcoming
Performed
Despair
Idleness
Already
Attempts
Fear
Promote
Often
Defeated
Forbear
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
The maxim of Cleobulus, Mediocrity is best, has been long considered a universal principle, extending through the whole compass of life and nature. The experience of every age seems to have given it new confirmation, and to show that nothing, however specious or alluring, is pursued with propriety or enjoyed with safety beyond certain limits.
Samuel Johnson
Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.
Samuel Johnson
They who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it.
Samuel Johnson
Smoking is a shocking thing - blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eyes, and noses, and having the same thing done to us.
Samuel Johnson
He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed. The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich.
Samuel Johnson
Every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.
Samuel Johnson
The whole of life is but keeping away the thoughts of death.
Samuel Johnson
There should be a stated day for commemorating the birthday of our Savior, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected.
Samuel Johnson
A married man has many cares, but a bachelor no pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.
Samuel Johnson
It is not possible to be regarded with tenderness, except by a few. That merit which gives greatness and renown diffuses its influence to a wide compass, but acts weakly on every single breast it is placed at a distance from common spectators, and shines like one of the remote stars, of which the light reaches us, but not the heat.
Samuel Johnson
Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.
Samuel Johnson
Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.
Samuel Johnson
A fallible being will fail somewhere.
Samuel Johnson
The present time is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
Samuel Johnson
A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.
Samuel Johnson
I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.
Samuel Johnson
Friendship may well deserve the sacrifice of pleasure, though not of conscience.
Samuel Johnson
An exotic and irrational entertainment.
Samuel Johnson
Ignorance cannot always be inferred from inaccuracy knowledge is not always present.
Samuel Johnson
