Samuel Johnson: Trending quotes (page 16)

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“Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.”

Samuel Johnson

1776
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

Question

“His [David Garrick's] death has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.”

Samuel Johnson

The Life of Edmund Smith
Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)

Death , Pleasure

“Ah! let not Censure term our fate our choice,
The stage but echoes back the public's voice;
The drama's laws the drama's patrons give,
For we that live to please must please to live.”

Samuel Johnson

Prologue at the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre (1747)

Fate , Law

“I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to be right.”

Samuel Johnson book The Plays of William Shakespeare

The Plays of William Shakespeare, Vol. I (1765), Preface

Appearance , Reading

“PATRON, n. One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is repaid in flattery.”

Samuel Johnson book A Dictionary of the English Language

A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

Support

“"Some," answered Imlac, "have indeed said that the soul is material, but I can scarcely believe that any man has thought it, who knew how to think; for all the conclusions of reason enforce the immateriality of mind, and all the notices of sense and investigations of science, concur to prove the unconsciousness of matter.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 48

Soul , Thinking , Sense , Science

“Declamation roared, while Passion slept.”

Samuel Johnson

Prologue at the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre (1747)

Passion

“The potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.”

Samuel Johnson

1780?
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

Dreams

“I'll come no more behind your scenes, David [Garrick]; for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities.”

Samuel Johnson

1750 Journal
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

“"Enlarge my life with multitude of days!"
In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays:
Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know
That life protracted is protracted woe.”

Samuel Johnson

Source: Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), Line 255

Life , Health

“Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.”

Samuel Johnson

Letter from Johnson to John Taylor, 18 August 1763. The Yale Book of Quotations edited by Fred R. Shapiro, pg 400.

Women , Law , Nature

“Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.”

Samuel Johnson

April 10, 1778
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

Thinking , Sea

“You see they'd have fitted him to a T.”

Samuel Johnson

1784
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

“All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to shew how much he can spare.”

Samuel Johnson

April 25, 1778, p. 403
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

“But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in few words.”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

No. 175 (19 November 1751)
The Rambler (1750–1752)

Truth

“Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.”

Samuel Johnson

May 8, 1781
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

Men , World

“I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else.”

Samuel Johnson

1763
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

“No man is much pleased with a companion, who does not increase, in some respect, his fondness for himself.”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

No. 104 (16 March 1751)
The Rambler (1750–1752)

“The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things — the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.”

Samuel Johnson

"It's written by Charles Grosvenor Osgood (1871-1964), as part of a 1917 preface to Boswell's 'Life of Johnson.'"
The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page http://www.samueljohnson.com/apocryph.html#2 Retrieved 2013-07-07
Misattributed

Education

“The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life.”

Samuel Johnson

The Life of Sir Thomas Browne (1756) http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/browne.html

Life