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Any of us would kill a cow rather than not have beef.
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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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Food
Rather
Would
Beef
Culinary
Cows
Cooking
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Kill
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, were exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue.
Samuel Johnson
All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.
Samuel Johnson
Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.
Samuel Johnson
While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
Samuel Johnson
I have always said the first Whig was the Devil.
Samuel Johnson
Whatever is formed for long duration arrives slowly to its maturity.
Samuel Johnson
Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge, and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things, when they are shown their form or told their use.
Samuel Johnson
The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
Samuel Johnson
Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter.
Samuel Johnson
I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning, for that is sure good. I would let him at first read any English book which happens to engage his attention because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He'll get better books afterwards.
Samuel Johnson
A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them.
Samuel Johnson
It was the maxim, I think, of Alphonsus of Aragon, that dead counsellors are safest. The grave puts an end to flattery and artifice, and the information we receive from books is pure from interest, fear, and ambition. Dead counsellors are likewise most instructive, because they are heard with patience and with reverence.
Samuel Johnson
Nothing has tended more to retard the advancement of science than the disposition in vulgar minds to vilify what they cannot comprehend.
Samuel Johnson
A man finds in the productions of nature an inexhaustible stock of material on which he can employ himself, without any temptations to envy or malevolence, and has always a certain prospect of discovering new reasons for adoring the sovereign author of the universe.
Samuel Johnson
It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy unenvied, to be healthful without physic, and secure without a guard to obtain from the bounty of nature, what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of artists and attendants, of flatterers and spies.
Samuel Johnson
I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
Samuel Johnson
In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much owing to the good opinion of mankind.
Samuel Johnson
Occupation alone is happiness.
Samuel Johnson
To be of no Church is dangerous.
Samuel Johnson
Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.
Samuel Johnson
