Quote

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

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
Weight
Disease
Insuperable
Strength
Impediment
Respect
Impediments
Fear
Obstinate
Given
Timidity
Mind
Persuaded
Men
Fatal

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
Language is the dress of thought and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy
Samuel Johnson
Image
Social sorrow loses half its pain.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
Samuel Johnson
Image
None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence.
Samuel Johnson
Image
A man is not obliged honestly to answer a question which should not properly be put.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know That life protracted is protracted woe.
Samuel Johnson
Image
A voyage to the moon, however romantick and absurd the scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the last century
Samuel Johnson
Image
One of the amusements of idleness is reading without fatigue of close attention and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read.
Samuel Johnson
Image
There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.
Samuel Johnson
Image
None of the projects or designs which exercise the mind of man are equally subject to obstructions and disappointments with the pursuit of fame.
Samuel Johnson
Image
When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.
Samuel Johnson
Image
So scanty is our present allowance of happiness that in many situations life could scarcely be supported if hope were not allowed to relieve the present hour by pleasures borrowed from the future.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy, affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly the one completes a villain, the other only finishes a fop.
Samuel Johnson
Image
To mean understandings, it is sufficient honour to be numbered amongst the lowest labourers of learning but different abilities must find different tasks. To hew stone, would have been unworthy of Palladio and to have rambled in search of shells and flowers, had but ill suited with the capacity of Newton.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.
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
I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Slander is the revenge of a coward, and dissimulation of his defense.
Samuel Johnson
Image
We go from anticipation to anticipation, not from satisfaction to satisfaction.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Games are good or bad as to their nature all may be perverted.
Samuel Johnson