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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
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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
Afterwards
Wakefield
Passages
Expunge
Fool
Goldsmith
Remember
Vicar
Nothing
Vicars
Enough
Zealous
Men
Passage
Love
Zeal
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.
Samuel Johnson
If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.
Samuel Johnson
One of the amusements of idleness is reading without fatigue of close attention and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read.
Samuel Johnson
Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.
Samuel Johnson
Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.
Samuel Johnson
An old friend never can be found, and nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost.
Samuel Johnson
A merchant may, perhaps, be a man of an enlarged mind, but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind.
Samuel Johnson
A man finds in the productions of nature an inexhaustible stock of material on which he can employ himself, without any temptations to envy or malevolence, and has always a certain prospect of discovering new reasons for adoring the sovereign author of the universe.
Samuel Johnson
It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous.
Samuel Johnson
Care that is once enter'd into the breast Will have the whole possession ere it rest.
Samuel Johnson
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.
Samuel Johnson
Shakespeare never had more than 6 lines together without a fault.
Samuel Johnson
Attainment is followed by neglect, possession by disgust, and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to many another course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last
Samuel Johnson
Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss.
Samuel Johnson
Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet.
Samuel Johnson
What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.
Samuel Johnson
Since life itself is uncertain, nothing which has life for its basis can boast much stability.
Samuel Johnson
A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge.
Samuel Johnson
Example is always more efficacious than precept.
Samuel Johnson
As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles.
Samuel Johnson
