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

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
Afterwards
Wakefield
Passages
Expunge
Fool
Goldsmith
Remember
Vicar
Nothing
Vicars
Enough
Zealous
Men
Passage
Love
Zeal

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is expected is already destroyed.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The vicious count their years virtuous, their acts.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence.
Samuel Johnson
Image
It is better a man should be abused than forgotten.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Knock the 't' off the 'can't.'
Samuel Johnson
Image
Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.
Samuel Johnson
Image
What is the reason that women servants ... have much lower wages than men servants ... when in fact our female house servants work much harder than the male?
Samuel Johnson
Image
With what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that the time spent at the toilet is lost in vanity.
Samuel Johnson
Image
As the faculty of writing has chiefly been a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has always been thrown upon the women.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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
Image
The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn. [Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.]
Samuel Johnson
Image
All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Wit will never make a man rich, but there are places where riches will always make a wit.
Samuel Johnson
Image
It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
Samuel Johnson