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
Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.
There are occasions on which all apologies are rudeness.
Labor, if it were not necessary for existence, would be indispensable for the happiness of man.
Suspicion is most often useless pain.
Friendship is seldom lasting but between equals, or where the superiority on one side is reduced by some equivalent advantage on the other.
Security will produce danger.
He endearing elegance of female friendship.
In bed we laugh, in bed we cry, and born in bed, in bed we die; the near approach a bed may show of human bliss to human woe.
Pleasure that is obtained by unreasonable and unsuitable cost must always end in pain.
In traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.
Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale.
Men who cannot deceive others are very often successful at deceiving themselves.
Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.