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
Samuel Johnson quotes about
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.
Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great.
Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.
It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.
Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.
The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give, for we that live to please, must please to live.
Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.
Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged must end in disappointment.
Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliate the other's failings because they are his own.
Sir, a man may be so much of everything, that he is nothing of anything.
The usual fortune for complaint is to excite contempt more than pity
The two great movers of the human mind are the desire for good, and the fear of evil