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We suffer equal pain from the pertinacious adhesion of unwelcome images, as from the evanescence of those which are pleasing and useful.

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
Equal
Suffering
Adhesion
Pain
Evanescence
Unwelcome
Pleasing
Images
Useful
Suffer

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Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet.
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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.
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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.
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It is the just doom of laziness and gluttony to be inactive without ease and drowsy without tranquility.
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Year chases year, decay pursues decay, Still drops some joy from with'ring life away New forms arise, and diff'rent views engage
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A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.
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A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
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Attack is the reaction. I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds.
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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.
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Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
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Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.
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Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.
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To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.
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As the faculty of writing has chiefly been a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has always been thrown upon the women.
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Do not ... hope wholly to reason away your troubles do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.
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Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
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Is not a patron one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?
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The highest panegyric, therefore, that private virtue can receive, is the praise of servants.
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All truth is valuable, and satirical criticism may be considered as useful when it rectifies error and improves judgment he that refines the public taste is a public benefactor.
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Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.
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