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
There is a certain degree of temptation which will overcome any virtue. Now, in so far as you approach temptation to a man, you do him an injury; and, if he is overcome, you share his guilt.
You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.
Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.
In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much owing to the good opinion of mankind.
Levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.
Whoever rises above those who once pleased themselves with equality, will have many malevolent gazers at his eminence.
No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius.
All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare.
A Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist who does not love Scotland better than truth.
Life is surely given us for higher purposes than to gather what our ancestors have wisely thrown away, and to learn what is of no value but because it has been forgotten.
Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility.
Though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one man often make many miserable.
We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.
Read the book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read.