Top 100 Quotes About Samuel Johnson
#1. Examine this statement: 'A woman cannot be a poet.' Dr Samuel Johnson (Englishman 1709-84 Occupation: Language Fixer and Big Mouth.) What then shall I give up? My poetry or my womanhood?
Jeanette Winterson
#2. There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn. - SAMUEL JOHNSON
Kingsley Amis
#3. Say "no" only when it really matters. Wear a bright red shirt with bright orange shorts? Sure. Put water in the toy tea set? Okay. Sleep with your head at the foot of the bed? Fine. Samuel Johnson said, "All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.
Gretchen Rubin
#4. ABRUPT, adj. Sudden, without ceremony, like the arrival of a cannon- shot and the departure of the soldier whose interests are most affected by it. Dr. Samuel Johnson beautifully said of another author's ideas that they were concatenated without abruption.
Ambrose Bierce
#5. Anytime people do something consciously for the last time, Samuel Johnson is reported to have remarked, they feel sad.
Kim Stanley Robinson
#6. As Samuel Johnson said, To hear complaints is wearisome alike to the wretched and the happy.
Gretchen Rubin
#7. I think Samuel Johnson had it right when he observed that hope is itself a species of happiness. So if we want to be happy it only makes sense to discipline ourselves to choose our attitudes, to think positively and to be hopeful.
Michael Josephson
#8. Samuel Johnson Is Indignant:that Scotland has so few trees.
Lydia Davis
#9. Invades the sacred hour of silent rest and leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast." ~ Samuel Johnson
J.J. McAvoy
#10. Some fusty fellow, perhaps Samuel Johnson, had once said that every man was sorry if he hadn't been a soldier. She
Mary Jo Putney
#11. Samuel Johnson once said that remarrying (and he's not talking about marrying the same person here, just remarrying) is the "triumph of hope over experience." So for me, remarrying the same person is the triumph of nostalgia over judgment.
Carrie Fisher
#12. Samuel Johnson said Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, tuned the English tongue.
Harold Bloom
#13. As Samuel Johnson purportedly wrote, "The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
Adam M. Grant
#14. You can talk about depression as a "chemical imbalance" all you want, but it presents itself as an external antagonist - a "demon," a "beast," or a "black dog," as Samuel Johnson called it. It could pounce at any time, even in the most innocuous setting.
Barbara Ehrenreich
#15. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
Samuel Johnson
#16. Though it's true that (dictionary-maker Samuel) Johnson sometimes seem to feel that the language was in decline, he didn't rail against it with (Jonathan) Swift's anger. Instead, he hoped the example of his dictionary would temper that change by providing a distinguished literary example
Robert Lane Greene
#17. Ben Franklin and Samuel Johnson, he credits their wisdom for his success. "They were both utterly brilliant men. And powerful communicators. Both have helped me all the way through life. Their lessons are easy to assimilate."
Charlie Munger
#18. Samuel Johnson placed this on his watch as a reminder near the end of his life; The night cometh.
David Brooks
#19. To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage." ~Samuel Johnson
Edward M. Hallowell
#21. Samuel Johnson: A book should either allow us to escape existence or teach us how to endure it .
David Shields
#22. At the bottom of the poster was the famous Samuel Johnson quote I've now heard repeated, mangled, and paraphrased many times: When a man is tired of London he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
Craig Taylor
#23. During the Samuel Johnson days they had big men enjoying small talk; today we have small men enjoying big talk.
Fred Allen
#24. In 1759, the great lexicographer Dr Samuel Johnson wrote: 'Advertisements are now so numerous they are very negligently perused.' An opinion many people express to this day, without realizing its centuries-old ancestry.
Winston Fletcher
#25. Quoting Samuel Johnson: Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.
James Boswell
#27. Perhaps Samuel Johnson was a great man; he was certainly a drumbling one.
Edward Dahlberg
#28. To go back and read Swift and Defoe and Samuel Johnson and Smollett and Pope - all those people we had to read in college English courses - to read them now is to have one of the infinite pleasures in life.
David McCullough
#29. I do find London exciting. Much as I hate to agree with that tedious old git Samuel Johnson, and despite the pompous imbecility of his famous remark about when a man is tired of London he is tired of life ... I can't dispute it.
Bill Bryson
#30. When it comes to fake food, I'm like Samuel Johnson, who remarked, "Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult." In other words, I can give something up altogether, but I can't indulge occasionally.
Gretchen Rubin
#31. Samuel Johnson said a second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience, Kirkland said.
Mary Jo Putney
#32. Thaumatomane: a person possessed of a passion for magic and wonders, Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson.
Susanna Clarke
#33. Dr. Calder [a Unitarian minister] said of Dr. [Samuel] Johnson on the publications of Boswell and Mrs. Piozzi, that he was like Actaeon, torn to pieces by his own pack.
Horace Walpole
#34. 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.
Samuel Johnson
#35. Society is held together by communication and information. Samuel Johnson
Ian Leslie
#36. [Samuel] Johnson's conversation was by much too strong for a person accustomed to obsequiousness and flattery; it was mustard in a young child's mouth!
Hester Lynch Piozzi
#37. By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen. I hope I see things from a greater distance.
Samuel Johnson
#40. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
#41. Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.
Samuel Johnson
#42. There ambush here relentless ruffians lay, And here the fell attorney prowls for prey.
Samuel Johnson
#44. He who makes a beast out of himself removes himself from the pain of being human
Samuel Johnson
#45. Exactness is first obtained, and afterwards elegance. But diction, merely vocal, is always in its childhood. As no man leaves his eloquence behind him, the new generations have all to learn. There may possibly be books without a polished language, but there can be no polished language without books.
Samuel Johnson
#46. The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is to attempt but little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made by short flights frequently repeated; the most lofty fabrics of science are formed by the continued accumulation of single propositions.
Samuel Johnson
#47. Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words.
Samuel Johnson
#48. He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed. The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich.
Samuel Johnson
#49. The heroes of literary history have been no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved.
Samuel Johnson
#50. Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect.
Samuel Johnson
#51. ABNODATION (ABNODA'TION) n.s.[abnodatio, Lat.] The act of cutting away knots from trees;a term of gardening.Dict.
Samuel Johnson
#52. The young man, who intends no ill,
Believes that none is intended, and therefore
Acts with openness and candor: but his father, having suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect, and too often allured to practice it.
Samuel Johnson
#53. "I fly from pleasure," said the prince, "because pleasure has ceased to please; I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others."
Samuel Johnson
#54. The true effect of genuine politeness seems to be rather ease than pleasure.
Samuel Johnson
#55. ADJUTOR (ADJU'TOR) n.s.[adjutor, Lat.] A helper.Dict. ADJUTORY (ADJU'TORY) adj.[adjutorius, Lat.] That which helps.Dict.
Samuel Johnson
#56. 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.
Samuel Johnson
#57. The limbs will quiver and move after the soul is gone.
Samuel Johnson
#59. A man guilty of poverty easily believes himself suspected.
Samuel Johnson
#60. Wealth is nothing in itself; it is not useful but when it departs from us.
Samuel Johnson
#61. The most useful truths are always universal, and unconnected with accidents and customs.
Samuel Johnson
#62. Though the discoveries or acquisitions of man are not always adequate to the expectations of his pride, they are at least sufficient to animate his industry.
Samuel Johnson
#63. When female minds are embittered by age or solitude, their malignity is generally exerted in a rigorous and spiteful superintendence of domestic trifles.
Samuel Johnson
#64. I was not born for courts or great affairs;I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers.Pope.
Samuel Johnson
#65. People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.
Samuel Johnson
#67. To use two languages familiarly and without contaminating one by the other, is very difficult; and to use more than two is hardly to be hoped. The prizes which some have received for their multiplicity of languages may be sufficient to excite industry, but can hardly generate confidence.
Samuel Johnson
#68. Hope is an amusement rather than a good, and adapted to none but very tranquil minds.
Samuel Johnson
#69. There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.
Samuel Johnson
#70. I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
Samuel Johnson
#71. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain.
Samuel Johnson
#73. He bemoans our miseries with the tender pity of a Cowper, who, in warning us of life's grovelling pursuits and empty joys, seeks, by withdrawing us from their delusive dominion, to prepare us for "another and a better world." No.
Samuel Johnson
#74. The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence.
Samuel Johnson
#75. There is nothing by which a man exasperates most people more, than displaying a superior ability of briliancy in conversation. They seem pleased at the time; but their envy makes them curse him at their hearts.
Samuel Johnson
#76. I live in the crowd of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.
Samuel Johnson
#77. The botanist looks upon the astronomer as a being unworthy of his regard; and he that is glowing great and happy by electrifying a bottle wonders how the world can be engaged by trifling prattle about war and peace.
Samuel Johnson
#78. He said that few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forgo the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive how to fill the interval between dinner and supper.
Samuel Johnson
#79. Of those that spin out trifles and die without a memorial, many flatter themselves with high opinions of their own importance, and imagine that they are every day adding some improvement to human life.
Samuel Johnson
#80. Rags will always make their appearance where they have a right to do it.
Samuel Johnson
#81. PU'RIST: one superstitiously nice in the use of words.
Samuel Johnson
#82. There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance.
Samuel Johnson
#83. He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.
Samuel Johnson
#84. The luster of diamonds is invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a picture are created by the shades; the highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue.
Samuel Johnson
#85. Life of Ages, richly poured,
Love of God unspent and free,
Flowing in the Prophet's word
And the People's liberty!
Never was to chosen race
That unstinted tide confined;
Thine is every time and place,
Fountain sweet of heart and mind!
Samuel Johnson
#86. In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man; they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry.
Samuel Johnson
#87. Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss.
Samuel Johnson
#88. Our triumphant age of plenty is riddled with darker feelings of doubt, cynicism, distrust, boredom and a strange kind of emptiness
Samuel Johnson
#89. 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
#90. Men are like stone jugs - you may lug them where you like by the ears.
Samuel Johnson
#91. A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.
Samuel Johnson
#92. Frequent discontent must proceed from frequent hardships.
Samuel Johnson
#93. I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.
Samuel Johnson
#94. Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle; for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence.
Samuel Johnson
#96. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great.
Samuel Johnson
#97. The king who makes war on his enemies tenderly distresses his subjects most cruelly.
Samuel Johnson
#100. Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.
Samuel Johnson
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