Quote

Wheresoe'er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new: Endless labor all along, Endless labor to be wrong: Phrase that Time has flung away Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.

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
Views
Phrases
Bonnets
Turn
Tricks
Uncouth
Wrong
Endless
Antique
Turns
Labor
Flung
Words
View
Antiques
Bonnet
Away
Poetry
Sonnet
Elegy
Nothing
Along
Phrase
Odes
Time
Strange
Trick
Disarray

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
Samuel Johnson
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If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.
Samuel Johnson
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The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef love, like being enlivened with champagne.
Samuel Johnson
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I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.
Samuel Johnson
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Happiness is enjoyed only in proportion as it is known and such is the state or folly of man, that it is known only by experience of its contrary.
Samuel Johnson
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When we see our enemies and friends gliding away before us, let us not forget that we are subject to the general law of mortality, and shall soon be where our doom will be fixed forever.
Samuel Johnson
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Lichfield, England. Swallows certainly sleep all winter. A number of them conglobulate together, by flying round and round, and then all in a heap throw themselves under water, and lye in the bed of a river.
Samuel Johnson
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The dependant who cultivates delicacy in himself very little consults his own tranquillity.
Samuel Johnson
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It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.
Samuel Johnson
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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
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That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments...
Samuel Johnson
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Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals.
Samuel Johnson
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Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.
Samuel Johnson
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Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.
Samuel Johnson
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The care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature.
Samuel Johnson
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A person loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal.
Samuel Johnson
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Age is rarely despised but when it is, contemptible.
Samuel Johnson
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The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.
Samuel Johnson
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Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.
Samuel Johnson
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What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.
Samuel Johnson