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Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn. [Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.]

Samuel Johnson

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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
Adorn
Untouched
Authorship
Touched
Left
Nothing
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.
Samuel Johnson
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A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.
Samuel Johnson
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What is twice read is commonly better remembered that what is transcribed.
Samuel Johnson
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Pain and disease awaken us to convictions which are necessary to our moral condition.
Samuel Johnson
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No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.
Samuel Johnson
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Consider what importance to society the chastity of women is. Upon that all the property in the world depends. We hang a thief for stealing a sheep but the unchastity of a woman transfers sheep and farm and all from the right owner.
Samuel Johnson
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Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances it is often concealed in splendour, and often in extravagance.
Samuel Johnson
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He that has too much to do will do something wrong.
Samuel Johnson
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Wretched un-idea'd girls.
Samuel Johnson
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Those whose abilities or knowledge incline them most to deviate from the general round of life are recalled from eccentricity by the laws of their existence.
Samuel Johnson
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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.
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None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence.
Samuel Johnson
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When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.
Samuel Johnson
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So scanty is our present allowance of happiness that in many situations life could scarcely be supported if hope were not allowed to relieve the present hour by pleasures borrowed from the future.
Samuel Johnson
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A woman of fortune being used the handling of money, spends it judiciously but a woman who gets the command of money for the first time upon her marriage, has such a gust in spending it, that she throws it away with great profusion.
Samuel Johnson
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Wise married women don't trouble themselves about infidelity in their husbands.
Samuel Johnson
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To talk in public, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire and answer inquiries, is the business of the scholar
Samuel Johnson
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Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.
Samuel Johnson
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It is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilised society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together.
Samuel Johnson
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Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.
Samuel Johnson