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
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.
A wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. He'll beat you all at piety.
At seventy-seven it is time to be earnest.
Disposition to derision and insult is awakened by the softness to foppery, the swell of insolence, the liveliness of levity, or the solemnity of grandeur; by the sprightly trip, the stately stalk, the formal strut, and the lofty mein; by gestures int
Count on it, if a person talks of their misfortune, there is something in it that is not disagreeable to them.
Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.
Dublin, though a place much worse than London, is not so bad as Iceland.
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
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
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