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
I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.
Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.
Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.
Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.
Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.
When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.
The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.
Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.
It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.