Quote

Cautious age suspects the flattering form, and only credits what experience tells.

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
Credit
Age
Experience
Form
Credits
Flattering
Cautious
Suspects
Tells

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
The mathematicians are well acquainted with the difference between pure science, which has only to do with ideas, and the application of its laws to the use of life, in which they are constrained to submit to the imperfections of matter and the influence of accidents.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.
Samuel Johnson
Image
There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.
Samuel Johnson
Image
All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The world is seldom what it seems to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The hopes of zeal are not wholly groundless.
Samuel Johnson
Image
You cannot give me an instance of any man who is permitted to lay out his own time contriving not to have tedious hours.
Samuel Johnson
Image
If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur.
Samuel Johnson
Image
In the condition of men, it frequently happens that grief and anxiety lie hid under the golden robes of prosperity and the gloom of calamity is cheered by secret radiations of hope and comfort as in the works of nature, the bog is sometimes covered with flowers, and the mine concealed in the barren crags.
Samuel Johnson
Image
An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The richest author that ever grazed the common of literature.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I fly from pleasure, said the prince, because pleasure has ceased to please I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others.
Samuel Johnson
Image
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Learn the leading precognita of all things-no need to turn over leaf by leaf, but grasp the trunk hard and you will shake all the branches. Advice cherished by Samuel Johnson that that, if one is to master any subject, one must first discover its general principles.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The mind is refrigerated by interruption the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject the reader is weary, he suspects not why and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied.
Samuel Johnson
Image
To purchase Heaven has gold the power? Can gold remove the mortal hour? In life can love be bought with gold? Are friendship's pleasures to be sold? No--all that's worth a wish--a thought, Fair virtue gives unbribed, unbought. Cease then on trash thy hopes to bind, Let nobler views engage thy mind.
Samuel Johnson