Quote

None can be pleased without praise, and few can be praised without falsehood.

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
Praise
None
Without
Praised
Pleased
Falsehood

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I have adopted the Roman sentiment, that it is more honorable to save a citizen than to kill an enemy.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation...to die is the fate of man but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.
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
If the man who turnips cries, Cry not when his father dies, 'Tis proof that he had rather Have a turnip than his father.
Samuel Johnson
Image
To proportion the eagerness of contest to its importance seems too hard a task for human wisdom. The pride of wit has kept ages busy in the discussion of useless questions, and the pride of power has destroyed armies, to gain or to keep unprofitable possessions.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Quotation is a good thing, there is a community of thought in it.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Life, however short, is made still shorter by waste of time.
Samuel Johnson
Image
It is generally agreed, that few men are made better by affluence or exaltation.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits the other recreates and revives them.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside
Samuel Johnson
Image
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
Samuel Johnson
Image
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.
Samuel Johnson
Image
All envy is proportionate to desire we are uneasy at the attainments of another, according as we think our own happiness would be advanced by the addition of that which he withholds from us.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The mere power of saving what is already in our hands must be of easy acquisition to every mind and as the example of Lord Bacon may show that the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a thousand instances every day prove that the humblest may practise it with success.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The main of life is composed of small incidents and petty occurrences of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Sir, it is wrong to stir up law-suits but when once it is certain that a law-suit is to go on, there is nothing wrong in a lawyer's endeavouring that he shall have the benefit, rather than another.
Samuel Johnson