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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

“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

“It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.”

Samuel Johnson

Of roast mutton served to him at an inn, June 3, 1784, p. 535
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

“His conversation does not show the minute-hand, but he strikes the hour very correctly.”

Samuel Johnson

Kearsley, 604
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Johnsoniana

“I remember very well, when I was at Oxford, an old gentleman said to me, "Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowledge; for when years come upon you, you will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome task."”

Samuel Johnson

July 21, 1763, p. 126
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Books , Knowledge

“To convince any man against his will is hard, but to please him against his will is justly pronounced by Dryden to be above the reach of human abilities.”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

No. 93
The Rambler (1750–1752)

“Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young.”

Samuel Johnson

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

“Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.”

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)

“Pleasure of itself is not a vice.”

Samuel Johnson

April 15, 1778
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

Pleasure

“I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.”

Samuel Johnson

On his final illness, 1784, p. 566
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

“A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.”

Samuel Johnson

April 24, 1779, p. 424
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

Art

“Slavery is now no where more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.”

Samuel Johnson The Idler

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

Country

“Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.”

Samuel Johnson

Actually said by Thomas Cooper, a U.S. politician.
Misattributed

Truth , Fraud

“No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had.”

Samuel Johnson

On Oliver Goldsmith1780
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

“I am inclined to believe that few attacks either of ridicule or invective make much noise, but by the help of those they provoke.”

Samuel Johnson

Letter to Hester Thrale (5 July 1783) http://books.google.com/books?id=8JuiYLGldcsC&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=%22samuel+johnson%22+few+attacks+ridicule+invective+noise+provoke&source=web&ots=HMST_SM18L&sig=xovCcC2lKiTX9V0p61QvIC_yHW0&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result

Help

“I do not know, sir, that the fellow is an infidel; but if he be an infidel, he is an infidel as a dog is an infidel; that is to say, he has never thought upon the subject.”

Samuel Johnson

1769
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

Dogs

“A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity.”

Samuel Johnson

1735
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

“There Poetry shall tune her sacred voice,
And wake from ignorance the Western World.”

Samuel Johnson

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

World

“This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.”

Samuel Johnson

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

“The true Genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.”

Samuel Johnson

The Life of Cowley http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/lvwal10h.htm
Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)

“He was so generally civil that nobody thanked him for it.”

Samuel Johnson

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

“Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound; great debts are like cannon, of loud noise but little danger.”

Samuel Johnson

Letter http://books.google.com/books?id=yEA_AQAAMAAJ&q=%22small+debts+are+like+small+shot+they+are+rattling+on+every+side+and+can+scarcely+be+escaped+without+a+wound+great+debts+are+like+cannon+of+loud+noise+but+little+danger%22&pg=PA189#v=onepage to Joseph Simpson, circa 1759
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

“All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.”

Samuel Johnson

April 15, 1778, p. 393
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

Freedom

“Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.”

Samuel Johnson

Prayers and Meditations, No. 1770 (1785)

Nature , Time

“He that thinks with more extent than another will want words of larger meaning; he that thinks with more subtilty will seek for terms of more nice discrimination; and where is the wonder, since words are but the images of things, that he who never knew the original should not know the copies?
Yet vanity inclines us to find faults any where rather than in ourselves. He that reads and grows no wiser, seldom suspects his own deficiency; but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood?”

Samuel Johnson The Idler

No. 70 (August 18, 1759)
The Idler (1758–1760)

Books , Thinking , Reading

“The student who would build his knowledge on solid foundations, and proceed by just degrees to the pinnacles of truth, is directed by the great philosopher of France to begin by doubting of his own existence. In like manner, whoever would complete any arduous and intricate enterprise, should, as soon as his imagination can cool after the first blaze of hope, place before his own eyes every possible embarrassment that may retard or defeat him. He should first question the probability of success, and then endeavour to remove the objections that he has raised.”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

No. 43 (14 August 1750)
The Rambler (1750–1752)

Truth , Hope , Imagination , Question

“My friend was of opinion that when a man of rank appeared in that character [as an author], he deserved to have his merit handsomely allowed.”

Samuel Johnson

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

Appearance

“Why, Sir, it is difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them.”

Samuel Johnson

Feb. 15, 1766, p. 145
Said of Rousseau and Voltaire
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

“Were it not for imagination, Sir, a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a Duchess.”

Samuel Johnson

May 9, 1778, p. 409
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

Imagination , Happiness

“He was a very good hater.”

Samuel Johnson

Source: Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson (1786), p. 83

“Wretched un-idea'd girls.”

Samuel Johnson

1752
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

Girl

“I refute it thus.”

Samuel Johnson

August 6, 1763, p. 134
Said as he kicked a stone, speaking of Berkeley's "ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter".
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.”

Samuel Johnson book A Dictionary of the English Language

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.
Preface http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/preface.html
A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

Forgetting , Daughters

“Enlarge my life with multitude of days!”

Samuel Johnson

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

Life

“The change of religion in Scotland, eager and vehement as it was, raised an epidemical enthusiasm, compounded of sullen scrupulousness and warlike ferocity, which, in a people whom idleness resigned to their own thoughts, and who conversing only with each other, suffered no dilution of their zeal from the gradual influx of new opinions, was long transmitted in its full strength from the old to the young, but by trade and intercourse with England, is now visibly abating, and giving way too fast to their laxity of practice and indifference of opinion, in which men, not sufficiently instructed to find the middle point, too easily shelter themselves from rigour and constraint.”

Samuel Johnson book A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

p. 8. https://books.google.com/books?id=-6JfAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA8
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775)

Religion , Indifference , People , Suffering

“Of the proportion, which the product of any region bears to the people, an estimate is commonly made according to the pecuniary price of the necessities of life; which is never certain, because it supposes what is far from truth, that the value of money is always the same, and so measures an unknown quantity by an uncertain standard. It is competent enough when the markets of the same country, at different times, and those times not too distant, are to be compared; but of very little use for the purpose of making one nation acquainted with the state of another.”

Samuel Johnson book A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

pp. 366-367. https://books.google.com/books?id=-6JfAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA366
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775)

Money , Time , Country , People

“To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.”

Samuel Johnson The Rambler

No. 68 (10 November 1750)
The Rambler (1750–1752)

Home , Happiness

“[S]uch is the delight of mental superiority, that none on whom nature or study have conferred it, would purchase the gifts of fortune by its loss.”

Samuel Johnson

The Rambler, No. 150 (Sat 24 Aug 1751). http://www.yalejohnson.com/frontend/sda_viewer?n=106855 See also The Yale Book of Quotations, Samuel Johnson 3 (2006)

Loss , Study , Nature

“To neglect at any time preparation for death, is to sleep on our post at a siege, but to omit it in old age, is to sleep at an attack.”

Samuel Johnson

The Rambler, No. 78 (Sat 15 Dec 1750). http://www.yalejohnson.com/frontend/sda_viewer?n=106855 See also The Yale Book of Quotations, Samuel Johnson 2 (2006)

Sleep , Time , Age , Death

“A jest breaks no bones.”

Samuel Johnson

June 4, 1781
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV