Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence.
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
May
Collected
Every
Verse
Prudence
Verses
Shakespeare
Civil
Euripides
Works
Economical
System
Precept
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.
Samuel Johnson
Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.
Samuel Johnson
I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.
Samuel Johnson
Books have always a secret influence on the understanding we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas he that reads books of science, thogh without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing.
Samuel Johnson
He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
Samuel Johnson
We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure.
Samuel Johnson
Let him go abroad to a distant country let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.
Samuel Johnson
Sir, it is wrong to stir up law-suits but when once it is certain that a law-suit is to go on, there is nothing wrong in a lawyer's endeavouring that he shall have the benefit, rather than another.
Samuel Johnson
The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
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
Expectation improperly indulged in must end in disappointment.
Samuel Johnson
There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.
Samuel Johnson
I remember very well, when I was at Oxford, an old gentleman said to me, Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowledge for when years come upon you, you will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome task.
Samuel Johnson
Books without the knowledge of life are useless.
Samuel Johnson
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
Samuel Johnson
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef love, like being enlivened with champagne.
Samuel Johnson
Want of tenderness is want of parts, and is no less a proof of stupidity than depravity.
Samuel Johnson
We may have uneasy feelings for seeing a creature in distress without pity for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them.
Samuel Johnson
The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another.
Samuel Johnson
Almost all the moral good which is left among us is the apparent effect of physical evil.
Samuel Johnson
