Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
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
Afterwards
Wakefield
Passages
Expunge
Fool
Goldsmith
Remember
Vicar
Nothing
Vicars
Enough
Zealous
Men
Passage
Love
Zeal
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Sir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is better than admiration, - judgement, to estimate things at their true value.
Samuel Johnson
I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
Samuel Johnson
There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.
Samuel Johnson
People have now a-days got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do as much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken.
Samuel Johnson
A mere literary man is a dull man a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.
Samuel Johnson
In my early years I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now.
Samuel Johnson
He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.
Samuel Johnson
It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm.
Samuel Johnson
A man, doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote enquiries.
Samuel Johnson
Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.
Samuel Johnson
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
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
The mind is refrigerated by interruption the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject the reader is weary, he suspects not why and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied.
Samuel Johnson
Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Samuel Johnson
You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompense of their labor, than when you give money merely in charity.
Samuel Johnson
Memory is like all other human powers, with which no man can be satisfied who measures them by what he can conceive, or by what he can desire.
Samuel Johnson
In order that all men might be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
Samuel Johnson
He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
Samuel Johnson
The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.
Samuel Johnson
Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation.
Samuel Johnson
