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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

“Blown about with every wind of criticism.”

Samuel Johnson

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

“The insolence of wealth will creep out.”

Samuel Johnson

April 18, 1778, p. 400
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

Wealth

“A thousand horrid Prodigies foretold it.
A feeble government, eluded Laws,
A factious Populace, luxurious Nobles,
And all the maladies of stinking states.”

Samuel Johnson

The Tragedy of Irene (1749), Act I, Sc. 1

Law

“Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger at his death.”

Samuel Johnson

1754
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

Death , Religion , Drawing

“Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.”

Samuel Johnson book A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), Inch Kenneth

Thinking , Sense , Distant , Past

“No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

No. 148 (17 August 1751)
The Rambler (1750–1752)

“And sure th' Eternal Master found
His single talent well employ'd.”

Samuel Johnson

Stanza 7
Elegy on the Death of Mr. Robert Levet, A Practiser in Physic (1783)

“Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties.”

Samuel Johnson

1743
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Bee

“I never take a nap after dinner but when I have had a bad night; and then the nap takes me.”

Samuel Johnson

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

Night

“Mrs. Montagu has dropt me. Now, Sir, there are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.”

Samuel Johnson

March 1781, p. 465
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

People

“Employment, sir, and hardships prevent melancholy.”

Samuel Johnson

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

“This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confessed —
Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed.”

Samuel Johnson

London: A Poem (1738) http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/london2.html, lines 176–177

Truth

“A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.”

Samuel Johnson

Quoted in the "Apophthegms, Sentiments, Opinions and Occasional Reflections" of Sir John Hawkins (1787-1789) in Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897), vol. II, p. 11, edited by George Birkbeck Hill

“The first years of man must make provision for the last.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 27

“No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”

Samuel Johnson

April 5, 1776, p. 302
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

Money

“A transition from an author's book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

No. 14 (5 May 1750) http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=Joh1Ram.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=14&division=div1
The Rambler (1750–1752)

Books , Imagination , Distant

“That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.”

Samuel Johnson

1770, p. 181
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

Idea

“He left the name at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale.”

Samuel Johnson

Source: Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), Line 221

World

“EXCISE — A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.”

Samuel Johnson book A Dictionary of the English Language

A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

Hate

“It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm.”

Samuel Johnson The Idler

No. 11 (June 24, 1758)
The Idler (1758–1760)

Weather

“Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise!
From Marlb'rough's eyes the streams of dotage flow,
And Swift expires, a driv'ler and a show.”

Samuel Johnson

Source: Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), Line 316

Fear

“Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty, could have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.”

Samuel Johnson

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

Hope

“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.”

Samuel Johnson

March 1759, p. 97
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Chance

“A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.”

Samuel Johnson

December 21, 1762
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

“Shakspeare never has six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven: but this does not refute my general assertion.”

Samuel Johnson

October 19, 1769, p. 170
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

“Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility.”

Samuel Johnson

July 20, 1762
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Feeling

“Johnson observed, that "he did not care to speak ill of any man behind his back, but he believed the gentleman was an attorney."”

Samuel Johnson

1770, p. 181
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

“[The poet] must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

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

Nature , Time , Future

“It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.”

Samuel Johnson

April 9, 1778
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

Age

“The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

No. 148 (17 August 1751)
The Rambler (1750–1752)

Parent

“A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.”

Samuel Johnson

April 14, 1778
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

Country

“From Thee, great God: we spring, to Thee we tend,
Path, motive, guide, original, and end.”

Samuel Johnson

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 257

God , Spring , Motivation

“If the man who turnips cries,
Cry not when his father dies,
'Tis a proof that he had rather
Have a turnip than his father.”

Samuel Johnson

Source: Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson (1786), p. 67

Cry

“[Imlac continues] "It was never supposed that cogitation is inherent in matter, or that every particle is a thinking being. Yet, if any part of matter be devoid of thought, what part can we suppose to think? Matter can differ from matter only in form, density, bulk, motion, and direction of motion: to which of these, however varied or combined, can consciousness be annexed? To be round or square, to be solid or fluid, to be great or little, to be moved slowly or swiftly one way or another, are modes of material existence, all equally alien from the nature of cogitation. If matter be once without thought, it can only be made to think by some new modification, but all the modifications which it can admit are equally unconnected with cogitative powers."”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

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

Way , Nature , Thinking , Parting

“He that thinks himself capable of astonishing may write blank verse: but those that hope only to please must condescend to rhyme.”

Samuel Johnson

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

Hope , Thinking

“If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.”

Samuel Johnson

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

“I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.”

Samuel Johnson

Seward, 617
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Johnsoniana

Beauty , Silence

“A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian,
Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched,
And touched nothing that he did not adorn.”

Samuel Johnson

Epitaph on Goldsmith
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“I remember a passage in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: "I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing."… There was another fine passage too which he struck out: "When I was a young man, being anxious to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions. But I soon gave this over; for I found that generally what was new was false."”

Samuel Johnson

1779
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

Love , Fools , Falseness

“Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance and the parent of Liberty.”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

No. 57 (2 October 1750)
The Rambler (1750–1752)

Parent , Sister , Daughters

“Cold approbation gave the ling'ring bays,
For those who durst not censure, scarce could praise.”

Samuel Johnson

Prologue at the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre (1747)

“Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.”

Samuel Johnson

1776 http://books.google.com/books?id=fcIIAAAAQAAJ&q=%22Melancholy+indeed+should+be+diverted+by+every+means+but+drinking%22&pg=PA6#v=onepage
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

Drink

“A fellow that makes no figure in company, and has a mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar-cruet.”

Samuel Johnson

Tour to the Hebrides, Sept. 30, 1773
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“The richest author that ever grazed the common of literature.”

Samuel Johnson

Of John Campbell, as quoted by Joseph Wharton; reported in "John Campbell", Encyclopedia Britannica (1911)

Literature

“We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know, because they have never deceived us.”

Samuel Johnson The Idler

No. 80 (October 27, 1759)
The Idler (1758–1760)

“No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

No. 106 (23 March 1751)
The Rambler (1750–1752)

Hope

“I never have sought the world; the world was not to seek me.”

Samuel Johnson

March 23, 1783
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

World

“I have two very cogent reasons for not printing any list of subscribers; — one, that I have lost all the names, — the other, that I have spent all the money.”

Samuel Johnson

1781, p. 477, Referring to subscribers to his edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare, with Notes (1765)
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

Money

“Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.”

Samuel Johnson

June 1784, p. 526 http://books.google.com/books?id=FMoIAAAAQAAJ&q="Courage+is+a+quality+so+necessary+for+maintaining+virtue+that+it+is+always+respected+even+when+it+is+associated+with+vice"&pg=PA319#v=onepage
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

Courage

“Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 29

Life , Marriage , Youth , Dreams