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An old friend never can be found, and nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
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Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Friends
Lost
Found
Nature
Cannot
Never
Provided
Easily
Friend
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge.
Samuel Johnson
To be of no Church is dangerous.
Samuel Johnson
To excite opposition and inflame malevolence is the unhappy privilege of courage made arrogant by consciousness of strength.
Samuel Johnson
Scarce any man becomes eminently disagreeable but by a departure from his real character, and an attempt at something for which nature or education has left him unqualified.
Samuel Johnson
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.
Samuel Johnson
You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.
Samuel Johnson
You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.
Samuel Johnson
Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest.
Samuel Johnson
We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure.
Samuel Johnson
This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.
Samuel Johnson
Being married to those sleepy-souled women is just like playing at cards for nothing: no passion is excited and the time is filled up. I do not, however, envy a fellow one of those honeysuckle wives for my part, as they are but creepers at best and commonly destroy the tree they so tenderly cling about.
Samuel Johnson
Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind, Obedient passions, and a will resigned
Samuel Johnson
Your manuscript is both good and original but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
Samuel Johnson
No one ever became great by imitation.
Samuel Johnson
Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest.
Samuel Johnson
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
Samuel Johnson
Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions
Samuel Johnson
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
Spite and ill-nature are among the most expensive luxuries in life.
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
