Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson, often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican and committed Tory, and has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is also the subject of "the most famous single biographical work in the whole of literature," James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth18 September 1709
It is easy for a man who sits idle at home, and has nobody to please but himself, to ridicule or censure the common practices of mankind.
Our supple tribes repress their patriot throats, And ask no questions but the price of votes.
Nobody has the right to put another under such a difficulty that he must either hurt the person by telling the truth or hurt himself by telling what is not true.
In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness - inspissated gloom.
Admiration begins where acquaintance ceases
Study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves
Accustom your children constantly to this; if a thing happened at one window and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end
Reason will by degrees submit to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness.
The accidental prescriptions of authority, when time has procured them veneration, are often confounded with the laws of nature, and those rules are supposed coeval with reason, of which the first rise cannot be discovered.
It is better a man should be abused than forgotten.
Order is a lovely nymph, the child of Beauty and Wisdom; her attendants are Comfort, Neatness, and Activity; her abode is the valley of happiness: she is always to be found when sought for, and never appears so lovely as when contrasted with her opponent, Disorder.
When people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer their inferior while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them.
Wretched un-idea'd girls.
To mean understandings, it is sufficient honour to be numbered amongst the lowest labourers of learning; but different abilities must find different tasks. To hew stone, would have been unworthy of Palladio; and to have rambled in search of shells and flowers, had but ill suited with the capacity of Newton.