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
Those who have any intention of deviating from the beaten roads of life, and acquiring a reputation superior to names hourly swept away by time among the refuse of fame, should add to their reason and their spirit the power of persisting in their pur
Attainment is followed by neglect, possession by disgust, and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to many another course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last
When a man marries a widow his jealousies revert to the past: no man is as good as his wife says her first husband was
We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures
Judgment is forced upon us by experience
I would consent to have a limb amputated to recover my spirits
Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life; and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre
Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.
A merchant may, perhaps, be a man of an enlarged mind, but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind.
Assertion is not argument; to contradict the statement of an opponent is not proof that you are correct.
The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.
All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.
Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.
Every man is of importance to himself.