Quote

A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists without any practical regard to morals and religion he may be learning not to live but to reason... while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed.

Samuel Johnson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Chief
Moralists
Live
Students
Unaffected
Without
Divine
Chiefs
Moralist
Mind
Learning
Practicals
Exhaust
Life
Moral
Student
Volumes
Religion
Practical
Comparing
Use
Compare
Morals
Unthought
May
Easily
Volume
Divines
Reason
Regard

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay an author.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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.
Samuel Johnson
Image
It is our first duty to serve society.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to he right.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Knock the 't' off the 'can't.'
Samuel Johnson
Image
Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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.
Samuel Johnson
Image
It is wonderful what a difference learning makes upon people even in the common intercourse of life, which does not appear to be much connected with it.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Riches seldom make their owners rich.
Samuel Johnson
Image
He who writes much will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of particular modes as may be easily noted.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Example is always more efficacious than precept.
Samuel Johnson
Image
If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.
Samuel Johnson
Image
You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The vicious count their years virtuous, their acts.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Of riches it is not necessary to write the praise. Let it, however, be remembered that he who has money to spare has it always in his power to benefit others, and of such power a good man must always be desirous.
Samuel Johnson
Image
If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.
Samuel Johnson