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We have always pretensions to fame which, in our own hearts, we know to be disputable.

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
Pretension
Vanity
Hearts
Fame
Heart
Always
Disputable
Pretensions

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People seldom read a book which is given to them and few are given. The way to spread a work is to sell it at a low price. No man will send to buy a thing that costs even sixpence without an intention to read it.
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A small country town is not the place in which one would choose to quarrel with a wife every human being in such places is a spy.
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It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called, by the generality of mankind, a particular genius.
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No one is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, their fondness for themselves.
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If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
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Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper.
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He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.
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Wine gives great pleasure, and every pleasure is of itself a good. and A man should cultivate his mind so as to have that confidence and readiness without wine, which wine gives.
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Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine that he possesses some qualities superior, either in kind or degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world.
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The truly strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.
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In order that all men might be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
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Occupation alone is happiness.
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There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other. When speech is employed only as the vehicle of falsehood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave and seek prey only for himself.
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In the condition of men, it frequently happens that grief and anxiety lie hid under the golden robes of prosperity and the gloom of calamity is cheered by secret radiations of hope and comfort as in the works of nature, the bog is sometimes covered with flowers, and the mine concealed in the barren crags.
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I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.
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A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice.
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He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar and many fold in their passage while they lie waiting for the gale.
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We never do anything consciously for the last time without sadness of heart.
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You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
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Life protracted is protracted woe.
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