Quote

Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal.

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
Ignorance
Voluntary
Criminal
Criminals

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Political liberty is only good insofar as it produces private liberty.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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
Image
Advice is offensive, it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves
Samuel Johnson
Image
Celestial wisdom calms the mind.
Samuel Johnson
Image
As pride sometimes is hid under humility, idleness if often covered by turbulence and hurry.
Samuel Johnson
Image
He to whom many objects of pursuit arise at the same time, will frequently hesitate between different desires till a rival has precluded him, or change his course as new attractions prevail, and harass himself without advancing.
Samuel Johnson
Image
All theory is against free will all experience is for it.
Samuel Johnson
Image
In misery's darkest cavern known, His useful care was ever nigh Where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan, And lonely want retir'd to die.
Samuel Johnson
Image
We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.
Samuel Johnson
Image
[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
Image
Men have been wise in many different modes but they have always laughed the same way.
Samuel Johnson
Image
No man can have much kindness for him by whom he does not believe himself esteemed, and nothing so evidently proves esteem as imitation.
Samuel Johnson
Image
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
Image
There is ... scarcely any species of writing of which we can tell what is its essence, and what are its constituents every new genius produces some innovation, which, when invented and approved, subverts the rules which the practice of foregoing authors had established.
Samuel Johnson
Image
People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.
Samuel Johnson