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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
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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
Strength
Impediment
Respect
Impediments
Fear
Obstinate
Given
Timidity
Mind
Persuaded
Men
Fatal
Weight
Disease
Insuperable
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
The size of a man's understanding might always be justly measured by his mirth.
Samuel Johnson
If we will have the kindness of others, we must endure their follies.
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Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.
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I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.
Samuel Johnson
To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.
Samuel Johnson
When a man feel the reprehension of a friend seconded by his own heart, he is easily heated into resentment.
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What is twice read is commonly better remembered that what is transcribed.
Samuel Johnson
I look upon this as I did upon the Dictionary: it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.
Samuel Johnson
The maxim of Cleobulus, Mediocrity is best, has been long considered a universal principle, extending through the whole compass of life and nature. The experience of every age seems to have given it new confirmation, and to show that nothing, however specious or alluring, is pursued with propriety or enjoyed with safety beyond certain limits.
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Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of language.
Samuel Johnson
Our aspirations are our possibilities.
Samuel Johnson
As the faculty of writing has chiefly been a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has always been thrown upon the women.
Samuel Johnson
The poor and the busy have no leisure for sentimental sorrow.
Samuel Johnson
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
Conjecture as to things useful, is good but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, is very idle.
Samuel Johnson
The balls of sight are so formed, that one man's eyes are spectacles to another, to read his heart with.
Samuel Johnson
Evil is uncertain in the same degree as good, and for the reason that we ought not to hope too securely, we ought not to fear with to much dejection.
Samuel Johnson
Everybody knows worse of himself than he knows of other men.
Samuel Johnson
But the distant hope of being one day useful or eminent ought not to mislead us too far from that study which is equally requisite to the great and mean, to the celebrated and obscure the art of moderating the desires, of repressing the appetites and of conciliating or retaining the favour of mankind.
Samuel Johnson
Spite and ill-nature are among the most expensive luxuries in life.
Samuel Johnson
