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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
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
Teacher
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Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Heart
Always
Disputable
Pretensions
Pretension
Vanity
Hearts
Fame
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.
Samuel Johnson
To read, write, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters.
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
Games are good or bad as to their nature all may be perverted.
Samuel Johnson
Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.
Samuel Johnson
It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy unenvied, to be healthful without physic, and secure without a guard to obtain from the bounty of nature, what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of artists and attendants, of flatterers and spies.
Samuel Johnson
There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?
Samuel Johnson
Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet.
Samuel Johnson
That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.
Samuel Johnson
The main of life is composed of small incidents and petty occurrences of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence.
Samuel Johnson
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
Samuel Johnson
Yet reason frowns in war's unequal game, Where wasted nations raise a single name And mortgag'd states their grandsire's wreaths regret, From age to age in everlasting debt Wreaths which at last the dear-bought right convey To rust on medals, or on stones decay.
Samuel Johnson
Sir, there is no end of negative criticism.
Samuel Johnson
Curiosity, like all other desires, produces pain as well as pleasure.
Samuel Johnson
I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
Samuel Johnson
Care that is once enter'd into the breast Will have the whole possession ere it rest.
Samuel Johnson
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
Wit is that which has been often thought, but never before was well expressed.
Samuel Johnson
Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
Samuel Johnson
Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter.
Samuel Johnson
