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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
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
Teacher
Translator
Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Despair
Idleness
Already
Attempts
Fear
Promote
Often
Defeated
Forbear
May
Showing
Timidity
Without
Endeavor
Endeavors
Overcome
Faint
Overcoming
Performed
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
A blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another.
Samuel Johnson
This world, where much is to be done and little to be known.
Samuel Johnson
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
Pound St. Paul's Church into atoms, and consider any single atom it is to be sure, good for nothing but put all these atoms together, and you have St. Paul's Church. So it is with human felicity, which is made up of many ingredients, each of which may be shown to be very insignificant.
Samuel Johnson
The king who makes war on his enemies tenderly distresses his subjects most cruelly.
Samuel Johnson
High people, sir, are the best take a hundred ladies of quality, you'll find them better wives, better mothers, more willing to sacrifice their own pleasures to their children, than a hundred other woman.
Samuel Johnson
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
Samuel Johnson
The future is purchased by the present.
Samuel Johnson
It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend.
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
No knowledge is useless, with the exception of heraldry.
Samuel Johnson
I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.
Samuel Johnson
As pride sometimes is hid under humility, idleness if often covered by turbulence and hurry.
Samuel Johnson
A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them.
Samuel Johnson
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Samuel Johnson
Everybody loves to have things which please the palate put in their way, without trouble or preparation.
Samuel Johnson
There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.
Samuel Johnson
The disturbers of our happiness, in this world, are our desires, our griefs, and our fears.
Samuel Johnson
I remember a passage in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.
Samuel Johnson
Conjecture as to things useful, is good but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, is very idle.
Samuel Johnson
