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 are charms made only for distant admiration.
Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.
You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.
The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.
I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.
Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?
Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.
To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.
Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.