Quote

The animadversions of critics are commonly such as may easily provoke the sedatest writer to some quickness of resentment and asperity of reply.

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
Writing
Reply
Commonly
Provoking
Resentment
Critics
Easily
Writer
Quickness
May
Provoke

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
The balls of sight are so formed, that one man's eyes are spectacles to another, to read his heart with.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species to remark general properties and large appearances.
Samuel Johnson
Image
We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.
Samuel Johnson
Image
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Mutual cowardice keeps us in peace.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Unintelligible language is a lantern without a light.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.
Samuel Johnson
Image
God Himself, sir, does not propose to judge a man until his life is over. Why should you and I?
Samuel Johnson
Image
Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
Samuel Johnson
Image
It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.
Samuel Johnson
Image
An exotic and irrational entertainment.
Samuel Johnson
Image
..to write and to live are very different. Many who praise virtue, do no more than praise it.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Though it is evident, that not more than one age or people can deserve the censure of being more averse from learning than any other, yet at all times knowledge must have encountered impediments, and wit been mortified with contempt, or harassed with persecution.
Samuel Johnson
Image
As he that lives longest lives but a little while, every man may be certain that he has no time to waste. The duties of life are commensurate to its duration and every day brings its task, which, if neglected, is doubled on the morrow.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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
Image
Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Age is rarely despised but when it is, contemptible.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Liberty is the parent of truth, but truth and decency are sometimes at variance. All men and all propositions are to be treated here as they deserve, and there are many who have no claim either to respect or decency.
Samuel Johnson
Image
When the eye or the imagination is struck with an uncommon work, the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was performed
Samuel Johnson