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There must always be some advantage on one side or the other, and it is better that advantage should be had by talents than by chance.

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
Chance
Better
Must
Always
Talents
Advantage
Talent
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Sides

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A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down.
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When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life for there is in London all that life can afford.
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Condemned to Hope's delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts or slow decline Our social comforts drop away.
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In all pleasures hope is a considerable part.
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I remember a passage in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.
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That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.
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All is not gold that glitters, as we have often been told and the adage is verified in your place and my favour but if what happens does not make us richer, we must bid it welcome, if it makes us wiser.
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Life admits not of delays when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.
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Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.
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He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
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All intellectual improvement arises from leisure.
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Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.
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People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.
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Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favour.
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Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty, and of ease, and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health.
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Those authors are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence.
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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.
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The hopes of zeal are not wholly groundless.
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It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.
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