Samuel Johnson: Trending quotes

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Samuel Johnson: 724 quotes26 likes

“Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.”

From Sir John Hawkins's Life of Johnson, Apothegms (1787)

“Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.”

In response to Hannah More wondering why Milton could write Paradise Lost but only poor sonnets. June 13, 1784, p. 542
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

“All this [wealth] excludes but one evil,—poverty.”

Samuel Johnson

1777
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

“But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.”

Samuel Johnson

July 14, 1763, p. 123
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

“A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.”

Samuel Johnson

1770, p. 182
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

“Attack is the reaction; I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds.”

Samuel Johnson

April 2, 1775
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

“In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.”

Samuel Johnson

1775
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

“A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly.”

Samuel Johnson

August 16, 1773
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)

“A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge. Consider, sir; what is the purpose of courts of justice? It is, that every man may have his cause fairly tried, by men appointed to try causes. A lawyer is not to tell what he knows to be a lie: he is not to produce what he knows to be a false deed; but he is not to usurp the province of the jury and of the judge, and determine what shall be the effect of evidence — what shall be the result of legal argument.”

Samuel Johnson

August 15, 1773
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)

“Then with no throbs of fiery pain,
No cold gradations of decay,
Death broke at once the vital chain,
And freed his soul the nearest way.”

Samuel Johnson

Stanza 9
Elegy on the Death of Mr. Robert Levet, A Practiser in Physic (1783)

“In misery's darkest cavern known,
His useful care was ever nigh
Where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan,
And lonely want retir'd to die.”

Samuel Johnson

Stanza 5
Elegy on the Death of Mr. Robert Levet, A Practiser in Physic (1783)

“ESSAY — A loose sally of the mind; an irregular indigested piece; not a regular and orderly composition.”

Samuel Johnson book A Dictionary of the English Language

A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

“Life admits not of delays; when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.”

Samuel Johnson

September 1, 1777
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

“Worth seeing? yes; but not worth going to see.”

Samuel Johnson

October 12, 1779 <br class="br">On the Giant's Causeway. A similar opinion was expressed by the English traveller Richard Twiss in 1775 in A Tour of Ireland http://books.google.ie/books?id=ujpIAAAAMAAJ, p. 157 <br class="br">Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

“Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.”

Samuel Johnson

Letter to James Boswell, December 7, 1782, p. 494
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

“Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.”

Samuel Johnson

May 1776
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

“Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.”

Samuel Johnson

July 28, 1763, p. 128
On Thomas Sheridan
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

“I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.”

Samuel Johnson book A Dictionary of the English Language

Preface http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/preface.html <br class="br">A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

“A cow is a very good animal in the field; but we turn her out of a garden.”

Samuel Johnson

April 14, 1772, p. 201
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

“Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.”

Samuel Johnson London

"The Bravery of the English Common Soldiers" http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5L9GAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA306&dq=%22Liberty+is%22&hl=pt-PT&sa=X&ei=QMMqU_f7MMPMhAeAwoC4DA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22Liberty%20is%22&f=false. Note: This essay was "added to some editions of The Idler, when collected into volumes, but not by Dr. Johnson" — vide The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 2 (London, 1806), footnote http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uYPfXTOfTTsC&pg=PA427&dq=%22This+short+paper%22&hl=pt-PT&sa=X&ei=DcgqU_PlN_Ha0QXQyoDoAw&ved=0CGIQ6AEwBjgU#v=onepage&q=%22This%20short%20paper%22&f=false on p. 427