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
Grief is a species of idleness.
Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.
The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.
Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea?
A man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he has both enjoyments.
All intellectual improvement arises from leisure.
He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.
No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.