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
He who attempts to do all will waste his life in doing little.
Most men are unwilling to be taught.
Prejudice is a great time-saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts. Prejudice not being founded on reason cannot be removed by argument.
Whatever is proposed, it is much easier to find reasons for rejecting than embracing.
We suffer equal pain from the pertinacious adhesion of unwelcome images, as from the evanescence of those which are pleasing and useful.
We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinion, because we very often differ from ourselves.
We are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction.
Towering is the confidence of twenty-one.
There is nothing so minute, or inconsiderable, that I would not rather know it than not.
There is in this world no real delight (excepting those of sensuality), but exchange of ideas in conversation.
The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment.
The hour of reformation is always delayed; every delay gives vice another opportunity of fortifying itself by habit.
The cure for the greatest part of human miseries is not radical, but palliative.
So willing is every man to flatter himself, that the difference between approving laws, and obeying them, is frequently forgotten; he that acknowledges the obligations of morality and pleases his vanity with enforcing them to others, concludes himself zealous in the cause of virtue.