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
What I learned from being in France was learning to be better satisfied with my own country
I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.
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.
I have heard him assert, that a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity
I have ever since (his wife's death) seemed to myself broken off from mankind; a kind of solitary wanderer in the wild of life, without any direction, or fixed point of view: a gloomy gazer on the world to which I have little relation
To embarrass justice by a multiplicity of laws, or to hazard it by confidence in judges, are the opposite rocks on which all civil institutions have been wrecked, and between which legislative wisdom has never yet found an open passage
To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
What we ever hope to do with ease, we must first learn to do with diligence.
He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
If one party resolves to demand what the other resolves to refuse, the dispute can be determined only by arbitration; and between powers who have no common superior, there is no other arbitrator than the sword
Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliate the other's failings because they are his own.
I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep the people from vice.
To act from pure benevolence is not possible for finite human beings, Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive.
With regard to the sharpest and most melting sorrow, that which arises from the loss of those whom we have loved with tenderness, it may be observed, that friendship between mortals can be contracted on no other terms than that one must some time mou