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Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Clipped
Hedge
Forest
Shakespeare
Forests
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
I have already enjoyed too much give me something to desire.
Samuel Johnson
A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists without any practical regard to morals and religion he may be learning not to live but to reason... while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed.
Samuel Johnson
Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation...to die is the fate of man but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.
Samuel Johnson
We ought not to raise expectations which it is not in our power to satisfy.-It is more pleasing to see smoke brightening into flame, than flame sinking into smoke.
Samuel Johnson
The first step to greatness is to be honest.
Samuel Johnson
Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal.
Samuel Johnson
There should be a stated day for commemorating the birthday of our Savior, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected.
Samuel Johnson
About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.
Samuel Johnson
He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.
Samuel Johnson
It is not possible to be regarded with tenderness, except by a few. That merit which gives greatness and renown diffuses its influence to a wide compass, but acts weakly on every single breast it is placed at a distance from common spectators, and shines like one of the remote stars, of which the light reaches us, but not the heat.
Samuel Johnson
The faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are more dangerous, because the influence of his example is more extensive and the interest of learning requires that they should be discovered and stigmatized, before they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, and become precedents of indisputable authority.
Samuel Johnson
Thought is always troublesome to him who lives without his own approbation.
Samuel Johnson
Memory is like all other human powers, with which no man can be satisfied who measures them by what he can conceive, or by what he can desire.
Samuel Johnson
The desires of man increase with his acquisitions.
Samuel Johnson
Nobody can be taught faster than he can learn.
Samuel Johnson
What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it for folly doesn't deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect.
Samuel Johnson
Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words.
Samuel Johnson
The complaint, therefore, that all topicks are preoccupied, is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness, by which some discourage others, and some themselves the mutability of mankind will always furnish writers with new images, and the luxuriance of fancy may always embellish them with new decorations.
Samuel Johnson
Those who have any intention of deviating from the beaten roads of life, and acquiring a reputation superior to names hourly swept away by time among the refuse of fame, should add to their reason and their spirit the power of persisting in their pur
Samuel Johnson
There is ... scarcely any species of writing of which we can tell what is its essence, and what are its constituents every new genius produces some innovation, which, when invented and approved, subverts the rules which the practice of foregoing authors had established.
Samuel Johnson
