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The end of writing is to instruct the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing.
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
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Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Instruct
Pleasing
Poetry
Art
Ends
Writing
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.
Samuel Johnson
I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.
Samuel Johnson
Men go to sea, before they know the unhappiness of that way of life and when they have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession as indeed is generally the case with men, when they have once engaged in any particular way of life.
Samuel Johnson
The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
Samuel Johnson
The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, were exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue.
Samuel Johnson
Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.
Samuel Johnson
The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
Samuel Johnson
Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding.
Samuel Johnson
Everybody knows worse of himself than he knows of other men.
Samuel Johnson
The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality.
Samuel Johnson
A lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.
Samuel Johnson
That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments...
Samuel Johnson
In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence.
Samuel Johnson
In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.
Samuel Johnson
Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance.
Samuel Johnson
If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.
Samuel Johnson
I will be conquered I will not capitulate.
Samuel Johnson
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.
Samuel Johnson
[The poet] must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.
Samuel Johnson
It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful.
Samuel Johnson
