Quote

Scarce any man becomes eminently disagreeable but by a departure from his real character, and an attempt at something for which nature or education has left him unqualified.

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
Character
Disagreeable
Real
Departure
Something
Scarce
Men
Attempt
Becomes
Education
Left
Eminently
Nature
Unqualified

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The civilities of the great are never thrown away.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Claret is the liquor for boys port for men but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The most Heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.
Samuel Johnson
Image
...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.
Samuel Johnson
Image
It is our first duty to serve society.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Want of tenderness is want of parts, and is no less a proof of stupidity than depravity.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
Samuel Johnson
Image
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
Samuel Johnson
Image
No man hates him at whom he can laugh.
Samuel Johnson
Image
We must consider how very little history there is--I mean real, authentic history. That certain kings reigned and certain battles were fought, we can depend upon as true but all the coloring, all the philosophy, of history is conjecture.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest.
Samuel Johnson
Image
A blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another.
Samuel Johnson
Image
To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
Samuel Johnson
Image
He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Pleasure that is obtained by unreasonable and unsuitable cost must always end in pain.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Domestic discord is not inevitably and fatally necessary but yet it is not easy to avoid.
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
I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
Samuel Johnson