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Those authors who would find many readers, must endeavour to please while they instruct.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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Condemned to Hope's delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts or slow decline Our social comforts drop away.
Samuel Johnson
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To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.
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Merit rather enforces respect than attracts fondness.
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New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.
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Timidity is a disease of the mind, obstinate and fatal for a man once persuaded that any impediment is insuperable has given it, with respect to himself, that strength and weight which it had not before.
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The roads of science are narrow, so that they who travel them, must wither follow or meet one another.
Samuel Johnson
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Every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.
Samuel Johnson
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I will be conquered I will not capitulate.
Samuel Johnson
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Wheresoe'er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new: Endless labor all along, Endless labor to be wrong: Phrase that Time has flung away Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.
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Those that have done nothing in life, are not qualified to judge of those that have done little
Samuel Johnson
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We must consider how very little history there is--I mean real, authentic history. That certain kings reigned and certain battles were fought, we can depend upon as true but all the coloring, all the philosophy, of history is conjecture.
Samuel Johnson
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To read, write, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters.
Samuel Johnson
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A man is not obliged honestly to answer a question which should not properly be put.
Samuel Johnson
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How small of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place consigned, Our own felicity we make or find. With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.
Samuel Johnson
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Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.
Samuel Johnson
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Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.
Samuel Johnson
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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
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In all pleasures hope is a considerable part.
Samuel Johnson
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Sir, there is no end of negative criticism.
Samuel Johnson
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Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy.
Samuel Johnson