Samuel Johnson: Trending quotes

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Samuel Johnson: 724 quotes26 likes

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

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

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

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

“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.”

Prologue at the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre (1747)

“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

“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)

“"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

“Declamation roared, while Passion slept.”

Prologue at the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre (1747)

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

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

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

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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.”

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)

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

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

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

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.”

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

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

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