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It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation from habit he that has once studiously developed a style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease.
Samuel Johnson
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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
Writing
Rarely
Developed
Ease
Complete
Studiously
Indeed
Affectation
Habit
Distinguish
Style
Afterwards
Easy
Writes
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, were exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue.
Samuel Johnson
You think I love flattery (says Dr. Johnson), and so I do but a little too much always disgusts me: that fellow Richardson, on the contrary, could not be contented to sail quietly down the stream of reputation, without longing to taste the froth from every stroke of the oar.
Samuel Johnson
Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears.
Samuel Johnson
Few of those who fill the world with books, have any pretensions to the hope either of pleasing or instructing. They have often no other task than to lay two books before them, out of which they compile a third, without any new material of their own, and with very little application of judgment to those which former authors have supplied.
Samuel Johnson
The coquette has companions, indeed, but no lovers,--for love is respectful and timorous and where among her followers will she find a husband?
Samuel Johnson
Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.
Samuel Johnson
A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, And touched nothing that he did not adorn.
Samuel Johnson
No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.... There is a remedy in human nature against tyranny, that will keep us safe under every form of government.
Samuel Johnson
An author places himself uncalled before the tribunal of criticism and solicits fame at the hazard of disgrace.
Samuel Johnson
If a man is in doubt whether it would be better for him to expose himself to martyrdom or not, he should not do it. He must be convinced that he has a delegation from heaven.
Samuel Johnson
Sir, there is no end of negative criticism.
Samuel Johnson
There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.
Samuel Johnson
Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson
Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it
Samuel Johnson
If I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him.
Samuel Johnson
Every reader should remember the diffidence of Socrates, and repair by his candour the injuries of time: he should impute the seeming defects of his author to some chasm of intelligence, and suppose that the sense which is now weak was once forcible
Samuel Johnson
Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world.
Samuel Johnson
Read the book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read.
Samuel Johnson
You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.
Samuel Johnson
I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.
Samuel Johnson
