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
The general remedy of those who are uneasy without knowing the cause is change of place.
Such are the vicissitudes of the world, through all its parts, that day and night, labor and rest, hurry and retirement, endear each other; such are the changes that keep the mind in action: we desire, we pursue, we obtain, we are satiated; we desire something else and begin a new pursuit.
Differences, we know, are never so effectually laid asleep as by some common calamity; an enemy unites all to whom he threatens danger.
To forget, or pretend to do so, to return a borrowed article, is the meanest sort of petty theft.
The booksellers are generous liberal-minded men.
Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgment and friendship are like being enlivened.
The parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we readily conform our minds are, above all other writings, to be found in the lives of particular persons, and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography.
The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, were exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue.
History can be formed from permanent monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost forever.
Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.
Of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished.
You despise a man for avarice; but you do not hate him.
It is surely very narrow policy that supposes money to be the chief good.
Avarice is a uniform and tractable vice; other intellectual distempers are different in different constitutions of mind. That which soothes the pride of one will offend the pride of another, but to the favor of the covetous bring money, and nothing is denied.