Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson, often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican and committed Tory, and has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is also the subject of "the most famous single biographical work in the whole of literature," James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth18 September 1709
Some have little power to do good, and have likewise little strength to resist evil.
He that has once concluded it lawful to resist power, when it wants merit, will soon find a want of merit, to justify his resistance to power.
I have always said the first Whig was the Devil.
In such a government as ours no man is appointed to an office because he is the fittest for it--nor hardly in any other government--because there are so many connections and dependencies to be studied.
In all political regulations, good cannot be complete, it can only be predominant.
He that shall peruse the political pamphlets of any past reign will wonder why they were so eagerly read, or so loudly praised.
Wheresoe'er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new: Endless labor all along, Endless labor to be wrong: Phrase that Time has flung away; Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.
Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place.
The commodiousness of money is indeed great; but there are some advantages which money cannot buy, and which therefore no wise man will by the love of money be tempted to forego.
Money confounds subordination.
A woman of fortune being used the handling of money, spends it judiciously; but a woman who gets the command of money for the first time upon her marriage, has such a gust in spending it, that she throws it away with great profusion.
Misfortunes should always be expected.
If misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill-fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced.
Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.