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Samuel Johnson Quotes
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Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. Religiously, he was a devout Anglican, and politically a committed Tory. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes Johnson as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is the subject of James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, described by Walter Jackson Bate as "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature".Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, Johnson attended Pembroke College, Oxford, for just over a year, but a lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher, he moved to London, where he began to write for The Gentleman's Magazine. His early works include the biography Life of Mr Richard Savage, the poems London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, and the play Irene.

After nine years of work, Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755. It had a far-reaching effect on Modern English and has been acclaimed as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship". This work brought Johnson popularity and success. Until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years later, Johnson's was the pre-eminent British dictionary. His later works included essays, an influential annotated edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare, and the widely read tale The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. In 1763, he befriended James Boswell, with whom he later travelled to Scotland; Johnson described their travels in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Towards the end of his life, he produced the massive and influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, a collection of biographies and evaluations of 17th- and 18th-century poets.

Johnson was a tall and robust man. His odd gestures and tics were disconcerting to some on first meeting him. Boswell's Life, along with other biographies, documented Johnson's behaviour and mannerisms in such detail that they have informed the posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome, a condition not defined or diagnosed in the 18th century. After a series of illnesses, he died on the evening of 13 December 1784, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. In the years following his death, Johnson began to be recognised as having had a lasting effect on literary criticism, and he was claimed by some to be the only truly great critic of English literature. Wikipedia  

✵ 18. September 1709 – 13. December 1784
Samuel Johnson photo
Samuel Johnson: 362   quotes 26   likes

Samuel Johnson Quotes

“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

Thinking

“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)

Time

“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)

Men , Lie , Justice , Business

“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)

Death , Pain , Way , Soul

“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

Life , Pleasure , Parting

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

Samuel Johnson

October 12, 1779
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
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

Happiness

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

Samuel Johnson

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

Life

“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

Pain , Stupidity , Nature

“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
A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

Idea , Science , Daughters , Forgetting

“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

Animals

“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

“As the Spanish proverb says, "He, who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him." So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.”

Samuel Johnson

April 17, 1778, p. 396
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

Travel , Home , Knowledge , Wealth

“The endearing elegance of female friendship.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 46

Friendship

“Let me rejoice in the light which Thou hast imparted; let me serve Thee with active zeal, humbled confidence, and wait with patient expectation for the time in which the soul which Thou receivest shall be satisfied with knowledge.”

Samuel Johnson

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 613

Soul , Confidence , Knowledge , Light

“Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.”

Samuel Johnson

Actually said by Charles de Gaulle, on leaving his presidency, as quoted inLife' (9 May 1969)
Misattributed

Love , Hate , People

“Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 11

Life

“A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him. A man when he gets into a higher sphere, into other habits of life, cannot keep up all his former connections. Then, Sir, those who knew him formerly upon a level with themselves, may think that they ought still to be treated as on a level, which cannot be; and an acquaintance in a former situation may bring out things which it would be very disagreeable to have mentioned before higher company, though, perhaps, everybody knows of them.”

Samuel Johnson

March 28, 1776, p. 296
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

Life , Thinking

“Superfluous lags the vet'ran on the stage.”

Samuel Johnson

Source: Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), Line 308

“Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,
Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?”

Samuel Johnson

Source: Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), Line 345

Fate

“Sir, your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.”

Samuel Johnson

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

“No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned … A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.”

Samuel Johnson

August 31 and September 23, 1773
Also quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)

Food , Chance

“Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.”

Samuel Johnson The Idler

No. 30 (November 11, 1758)
The Idler (1758–1760)

Love , War , Truth

“Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.”

Samuel Johnson

September 17, 1773
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)

“NETWORK — Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.”

Samuel Johnson book A Dictionary of the English Language

A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

“Sir, you have but two topicks, yourself and me. I am sick of both.”

Samuel Johnson

May 1776 http://books.google.com/books?id=8DcUAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Sir+you+have+but+two+topicks+yourself+and+me+I+am+sick+of+both%22&pg=PA53#v=onepage, p. 313
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

“I am a great friend to public amusements; for they keep people from vice.”

Samuel Johnson

1772
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

People

“I know not whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lies.”

Samuel Johnson The Idler

No. 30 (November 11, 1758)
The Idler (1758–1760)

“The greater, far the greater number of those who rave and rail, and inquire and accuse, neither suspect nor fear, nor care for the publick; but hope to force their way to riches, by virulence and invective, and are vehement and clamorous, only that they may be sooner hired to be silent.”

Samuel Johnson

The Patriot (1774)

Fear , Hope , Way

“Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea.”

Samuel Johnson

When asked by Maurice Morgann whom he considered to be the better poet — Smart or Derrick, 1783, p. 504
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

“A man will turn over half a library to make one book.”

Samuel Johnson

April 6, 1775
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

Books

“The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.”

Samuel Johnson

1778
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

Strong

“It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.”

Samuel Johnson

Source: Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson (1786), p. 206

Pleasure

“English superiority and American obedience.”

Samuel Johnson

As quoted in The Life of Samuel Johnson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/1-55786-664-3 (1994), by Robert DeMaria, Jr., Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 252–256.

“Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.”

Samuel Johnson

September 20, 1773
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)

People , Gratitude

“Let observation with extensive view
Survey mankind, from China to Peru.”

Samuel Johnson

Source: Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), Line 1; comparable to: "All human race, from China to Peru, Pleasure, howe’er disguis’d by art, pursue", Thomas Warton, Universal Love of Pleasure

“The limbs will quiver and move after the soul is gone.”

Samuel Johnson

Northcote, 487
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Johnsoniana

Soul

“Catch then, O! catch the transient hour,
Improve each moment as it flies;
Life's a short Summer — man a flower,
He dies — alas! how soon he dies!”

Samuel Johnson

Winter, An Ode. The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1787), p. 355

Life , Flowers , Summer

“To a poet nothing can be useless.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 10

“The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.”

Samuel Johnson

Source: Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson (1786), p. 111

Wisdom , Law

“The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.”

Samuel Johnson

Life of Milton
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“There are, in every age, new errors to be rectified, and new prejudices to be opposed.”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

No. 86 (12 January 1751)
The Rambler (1750–1752)

Age , Error

“There is a wicked inclination in most people to suppose an old man decayed in his intellects. If a young or middle-aged man, when leaving a company, does not remember where he laid his hat, it is nothing; but if the same inattention is discovered in an old man, people will shrug up their shoulders, and say, "His memory is going."”

Samuel Johnson

1783, p. 501
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

People , Age , Memory

“It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.”

Samuel Johnson

The Adventurer, # 84 (August 25, 1753) http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12050
Variant: Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.

Silence

“The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.”

Samuel Johnson
Life , Spring , Nature , Knowledge

“Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.”

Samuel Johnson

Vol. II, p. 406
Letters to and from Dr. Samuel Johnson