Quote

It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.

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
Differs
Refinement
Savage
Elegance
Savages
Civilized
Men

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
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
Image
When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Revenge is an act of passion vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged crimes are avenged.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.
Samuel Johnson
Image
When two Eglishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Pension: An allowance made to anyone without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.
Samuel Johnson
Image
That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments...
Samuel Johnson
Image
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
Image
A man should be careful never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage. People may be amused at the time, but they will be remembered, and brought out against him upon some subsequent occasion.
Samuel Johnson
Image
This world, where much is to be done and little to be known.
Samuel Johnson
Image
All intellectual improvement arises from leisure.
Samuel Johnson
Image
There is a certain race of men that either imagine it their duty, or make it their amusement, to hinder the reception of every work of learning or genius, who stand as sentinels in the avenues of fame, and value themselves upon giving Ignorance and Envy the first notice of a prey.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he must study at Christ Church and All Souls.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Why, sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, Sir, is not in Nature.
Samuel Johnson
Image
One of the most pernicious effects of haste is obscurity.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I believe it will be found that those who marry late are best pleased with their children and those who marry early, with their partners.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The mere power of saving what is already in our hands must be of easy acquisition to every mind and as the example of Lord Bacon may show that the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a thousand instances every day prove that the humblest may practise it with success.
Samuel Johnson
Image
That eminence of learning is not to be gained without labour, at least equal to that which any other kind of greatness can require, will be allowed by those who wish to elevate the character of a scholar since they cannot but know that every human acquisition is valuable in proportion to the difficulty of its attainment.
Samuel Johnson
Image
He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed. The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich.
Samuel Johnson