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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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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
Proportion
Letters
Therefore
Read
Business
Converse
Write
Proportions
Writing
Converses
Men
Dues
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.
Samuel Johnson
Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.
Samuel Johnson
How few of his friends' houses would a man choose to be at when he is sick.
Samuel Johnson
In general those parents have the most reverence who most deserve it for he that lives well cannot be despised.
Samuel Johnson
Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.
Samuel Johnson
Our aspirations are our possibilities.
Samuel Johnson
He that would travel for the entertainment of others should remember that the great object of remark is human life.
Samuel Johnson
He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.
Samuel Johnson
..to write and to live are very different. Many who praise virtue, do no more than praise it.
Samuel Johnson
Language is the dress of thought.
Samuel Johnson
The hostility perpetually exercised between one man and another, is caused by the desire of many for that which only few can possess. Every man would be rich, powerful, and famous yet fame, power, and riches, are only the names of relative conditions, which imply the obscurity, dependence, and poverty of greater numbers.
Samuel Johnson
Every desire is a viper in the bosom, who while he was chill was harmless but when warmth gave him strength, exerted it in poison.
Samuel Johnson
Order is a lovely nymph, the child of Beauty and Wisdom her attendants are Comfort, Neatness, and Activity her abode is the valley of happiness: she is always to be found when sought for, and never appears so lovely as when contrasted with her opponent, Disorder.
Samuel Johnson
The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.
Samuel Johnson
The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another and each labors first to impose upon himself and then to propagate the imposture.
Samuel Johnson
To do nothing is in everyone's power.
Samuel Johnson
Wise married women don't trouble themselves about infidelity in their husbands.
Samuel Johnson
He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience. We have always protected the Americans we may therefore subject them to government.
Samuel Johnson
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life for there is in London all that life can afford.
Samuel Johnson
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Samuel Johnson
