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Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use.

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
Understanding
Readers
Particulars
Common
Lays
Extensive
Use
Throw
Multitude
Part
Details
Comprehension
Littles
Rules
Multitudes
Nicety
Little
General
Detail
Disgusts
Writing
Reader
Disgusting
Niceties
Much
Greatest
Heads
Understandings

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Fear naturally quickens the flight of guilt.
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Confidence is a plant of slow growth especially in an aged bosom
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You never find people laboring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful income.
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To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
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The faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are more dangerous, because the influence of his example is more extensive and the interest of learning requires that they should be discovered and stigmatized, before they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, and become precedents of indisputable authority.
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In life's last scene what prodigies surprise, Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise! From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow, And Swift expires a driveller and a show.
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Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know That life protracted is protracted woe.
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The richest author that ever grazed the common of literature.
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Men are like stone jugs - you may lug them where you like by the ears.
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A lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.
Samuel Johnson
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It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.
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All industry must be excited by hope.
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Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.
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Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.
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Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
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Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge, and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things, when they are shown their form or told their use.
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I look upon this as I did upon the Dictionary: it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.
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An old friend never can be found, and nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost.
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Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.
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No evil is insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong.
Samuel Johnson