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
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than open one's mouth and remove all doubt.
At seventy-seven it is time to be earnest.
I beg to submit that it is the first.
The chains of habit are generally too week to be felt, until they are too strong to be broken.
Of the innumerable authors whose performances are thus treasured up in magnificent obscurity (in a library), most are forgotten, because they never deserved to be remembered
Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.
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
Smoking. . . is a shocking thing, blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eyes and noses, and having the same thing done to us.
No greater felicity can genius attain than that of having purified intellectual pleasure, separated mirth from indecency, and wit from licentiousness
Sorrow is the rust of the soul and activity will cleanse and brighten it.
A wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. He'll beat you all at piety.
Read your own compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
Claret is the liquor for boys; port, for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy
No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize him and thus force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability