Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Philosophy has often attempted to repress insolence by asserting that all conditions are leveled by death a position which, however it may defect the happy, will seldom afford much comfort to the wretched.
Samuel Johnson
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Often
Seldom
Leveled
Death
Afford
Asserting
May
Comfort
Repress
Much
However
Insolence
Conditions
Defect
Position
Attempted
Philosophy
Defects
Happy
Wretched
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.
Samuel Johnson
Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim and when you are calculating, calculate.
Samuel Johnson
As a madman is apt to think himself grown suddenly great, so he that grows suddenly great is apt to borrow a little from the madman.
Samuel Johnson
None can be pleased without praise, and few can be praised without falsehood.
Samuel Johnson
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Samuel Johnson
By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.
Samuel Johnson
Many falsehoods are passing into uncontradicted history.
Samuel Johnson
The mathematicians are well acquainted with the difference between pure science, which has only to do with ideas, and the application of its laws to the use of life, in which they are constrained to submit to the imperfections of matter and the influence of accidents.
Samuel Johnson
Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.
Samuel Johnson
Is not a patron one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?
Samuel Johnson
An old friend never can be found, and nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost.
Samuel Johnson
Then with no throbs of fiery pain, No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain, And freed his soul the nearest way.
Samuel Johnson
No wonder, Sir, that he is vain a man who is perpetually flattered in every mode that can be conceived. So many bellows have blown the fire, that one wonders he is not by this time become a cinder.
Samuel Johnson
Glory, the casual gift of thoughtless crowds! Glory, the bribe of avaricious virtue!
Samuel Johnson
Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past.
Samuel Johnson
Commerce can never be at a stop while one man wants what another can supply and credit will never be denied, while it is likely to be repaid with profit.
Samuel Johnson
Jesting, often, only proves a want of intellect.
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
The first step to greatness is to be honest.
Samuel Johnson
One of the amusements of idleness is reading without fatigue of close attention and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read.
Samuel Johnson
