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 rules that I shall propose concerning secrecy, and from which I think it not safe to deviate without long and exact deliberation, are, never to solicit the knowledge of a secret,--not willingly, nor without many limitations, to accept such confidence when it is offered; when a secret is once admitted, to consider the trust as of a very high nature, important as society and sacred as truth, and therefore not to be violated for any incidental convenience, or slight appearance of contrary fitness.
To tell your own secrets is generally folly, but that folly is without guilt; to communicate those with which we are intrusted is always treachery, and treachery for the most part combined with folly.
As every one is pleased with imagining that he knows something not yet commonly divulged, secret history easily gains credit; but it is for the most part believed only while it circulates in whispers, and when once it is openly told, is openly refuted.
To be of no Church is dangerous.
He that never labors may know the pains of idleness, but not the pleasures.
To paint things as they are requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy.
What is twice read is commonly better remembered that what is transcribed.
The first years of man must make provision for the last.
None can be pleased without praise, and few can be praised without falsehood.
A man guilty of poverty easily believes himself suspected.
Pleasure itself is not a vice
Present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.
Occupation alone is happiness.
These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.