Quote

There is no book so poor that it would not be a prodigy if wholly made by a single man.

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
Single
Poor
Book
Made
Would
Men
Prodigy
Prodigies
Wholly

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself
Samuel Johnson
Image
Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.
Samuel Johnson
Image
His virtues walked their narrow round, Nor made a pause, nor left a void And sure the Eternal Master found The single talent well employed.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Nobody can be taught faster than he can learn.
Samuel Johnson
Image
To wipe all tears from off all faces is a task too hard for mortals but to alleviate misfortunes is often within the most limited power: yet the opportunities which every day affords of relieving the most wretched of human beings are overlooked and neglected with equal disregard of policy and goodness.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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
Image
To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.
Samuel Johnson
Image
About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.
Samuel Johnson
Image
If the guardian or the mother Tell the woes of willful waste, Scorn their counsel and their pother, You can hang or drown at last.
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
Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order. - John V. Lindsay No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it.
Samuel Johnson
Image
No one is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, their fondness for themselves.
Samuel Johnson
Image
No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Conjecture as to things useful, is good but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, is very idle.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress?
Samuel Johnson
Image
All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Every man's affairs, however little, are important to himself.
Samuel Johnson
Image
As to precedents, to be sure they will increase in course of time but the more precedents there are, the less occasion is there for law that is to say, the less occasion is there for investigating principles.
Samuel Johnson
Image
We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure.
Samuel Johnson