Samuel Johnson: Greatness

Samuel Johnson was English writer. Explore interesting quotes on greatness.

Samuel Johnson: 724 quotes26 likes

“A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.”

“Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.”

Source: Works of Samuel Johnson

“He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.”

“Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.”

“There is now less flogging in our great schools than formerly, but then less is learned there; so that what the boys get at one end they lose at the other.”

1775, p. 273
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

“The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.”

1780
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

“Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.”

The Life of Pope http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5101 <br class="br">Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)

“Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any high degree; only about as much as is used in the lower kinds of poetry.”

July 6, 1763, p. 120
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

“I have, all my life long, been lying till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good.”

September 14, 1773
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“[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

“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.”

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 <br class="br">Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

“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)