Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
In discussing these exceptions from the course of nature, the first question is, whether the fact be justly stated. That which is strange is delightful, and a pleasing error is not willingly detected.
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
Facts
Exception
Justly
Nature
Errors
Exceptions
Firsts
Strange
Stated
First
Question
Willingly
Courses
Discussing
Course
Pleasing
Whether
Delightful
Fact
Error
Detected
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy.
Samuel Johnson
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
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
If in an actor there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid languor, a torpid apathy, the greatest kindness that can be shown him is a speedy sentence of expulsion.
Samuel Johnson
An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty.
Samuel Johnson
Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.
Samuel Johnson
Commerce can never be at a stop while one man wants what another can supply and credit will never be denied, while it is likely to be repaid with profit.
Samuel Johnson
A merchant may, perhaps, be a man of an enlarged mind, but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind.
Samuel Johnson
Scarce any man becomes eminently disagreeable but by a departure from his real character, and an attempt at something for which nature or education has left him unqualified.
Samuel Johnson
Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.
Samuel Johnson
I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.
Samuel Johnson
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
Samuel Johnson
Everybody loves to have things which please the palate put in their way, without trouble or preparation.
Samuel Johnson
There is a frightful interval between the seed and the timber.
Samuel Johnson
Few have abilities so much needed by the rest of the world as to be caressed on their own terms and he that will not condescend to recommend himself by external embellishments must submit to the fate of just sentiment meanly expressed, and be ridiculed and forgotten before he is understood.
Samuel Johnson
We must consider how very little history there is--I mean real, authentic history. That certain kings reigned and certain battles were fought, we can depend upon as true but all the coloring, all the philosophy, of history is conjecture.
Samuel Johnson
Celestial wisdom calms the mind.
Samuel Johnson
Being reproached for giving to an unworthy person, Aristotle said, I did not give it to the man, but to humanity.
Samuel Johnson
There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.
Samuel Johnson
Timidity is a disease of the mind, obstinate and fatal for a man once persuaded that any impediment is insuperable has given it, with respect to himself, that strength and weight which it had not before.
Samuel Johnson
