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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
General
Read
Else
Anything
People
Amuse
Willingly

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Life admits not of delays when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.
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It is much easier not to write like a man than to write like a woman.
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Wheresoe'er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new: Endless labor all along, Endless labor to be wrong: Phrase that Time has flung away Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.
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Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.
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Jesting, often, only proves a want of intellect.
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Greece appears to be the fountain of knowledge Rome of elegance
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Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.
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To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
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Few things are so liberally bestowed, or squandered with so little effect, as good advice.
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Every man that has felt pain knows how little all other comforts can gladden him to whom health is denied. Yet who is there does not sometimes hazard it for the enjoyment of an hour?
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Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.
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No knowledge is useless, with the exception of heraldry.
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This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.
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Applause abates diligence.
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When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life for there is in London all that life can afford.
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Faults and defects every work of man must have.
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Learn the leading precognita of all things-no need to turn over leaf by leaf, but grasp the trunk hard and you will shake all the branches. Advice cherished by Samuel Johnson that that, if one is to master any subject, one must first discover its general principles.
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It is better to live rich than to die rich.
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There are occasions on which all apology is rudeness.
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Inquiries into the heart are not for man.
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