Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Conjecture as to things useful, is good but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, is very idle.
Samuel Johnson
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Good
Things
Would
Conjecture
Idle
Useless
Useful
Theory
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre
Samuel Johnson
I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
Samuel Johnson
If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur.
Samuel Johnson
If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.
Samuel Johnson
We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember.
Samuel Johnson
A newswriter is a man without virtue, who lies at home for his own profit.
Samuel Johnson
Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
Samuel Johnson
A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.
Samuel Johnson
There ambush here relentless ruffians lay, And here the fell attorney prowls for prey.
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
Those whose abilities or knowledge incline them most to deviate from the general round of life are recalled from eccentricity by the laws of their existence.
Samuel Johnson
But to the particular species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and emulation.
Samuel Johnson
Remember that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity long continued will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible.
Samuel Johnson
Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.
Samuel Johnson
No man should attempt to teach others what he has never learned himself
Samuel Johnson
Every man has something to do which he neglects, every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat.
Samuel Johnson
We suffer equal pain from the pertinacious adhesion of unwelcome images, as from the evanescence of those which are pleasing and useful.
Samuel Johnson
The equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.
Samuel Johnson
Art hath an enemy called ignorance.
Samuel Johnson
A voyage to the moon, however romantick and absurd the scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the last century
Samuel Johnson
