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
No man forgets his original trade: the rights of nations and of kings sink into questions of grammar, if grammarians discuss them
Nothing is to be expected from the workman whose tools are for ever to be sought
That man (Lord Lyttelton) sat down to write a book, to tell the world what the world had all his life been telling him
That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona
It may likewise contribute to soften that resentment which pride naturally raises against opposition, if we consider, that he who differs from us, does not always contradict us; he has one view of an object, and we have another; each describes what h
The world is not yet exhaused; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.
The two great movers of the human mind are the desire for good, and the fear of evil
The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
The age being now past of vagrant excursion and fortuitous hostility, he was under the necessity of travelling from court to court, scorned and repulsed as a wild projector, an idle promiser of kingdoms in the clouds; nor has any part of the world y
It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.
To love one that is great, is almost to be great one's self.
When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of 21, little did I suspect that I should be at 49, what I now am.
There are minds which easily sink into submission, that look on grandeur with undistinguishing reverence, and discover no defect where there is elevation of rank and affluence of riches
To proceed from one truth to another, and connect distant propositions by regular consequences, is the great prerogative of man