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People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.

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
Amuse
Willingly
General
Read
Else
Anything
People

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Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet. From those sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we do not easily receive strong impressions, or delightful images and words to which we are nearly strangers, whenever they occur, draw that attention on themselves which they should transmit to other things.
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Expectation improperly indulged in must end in disappointment.
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A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.
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I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
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A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him.
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There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.
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Golf is a game in which you claim the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood.
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Mutual complacency is the atmosphere of conjugal love.
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The wickedness of a loose or profane author is more atrocious than that of a giddy libertine or drunken ravisher, not only because it extends its effects wider, as a pestilence that taints the air is more destructive than poison infused in a draught, but because it is committed with cool deliberation.
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The desires of man increase with his acquisitions.
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Shakespeare never had more than 6 lines together without a fault.
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Wretched un-idea'd girls.
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The true effect of genuine politeness seems to be rather ease than pleasure.
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All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.
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Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words.
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Other things may be seized by might, or purchased with money, but knowledge is to be gained only by study, and study to be prosecuted only in retirement.
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Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument.
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