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
Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil; but its duty, like that of other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it. It should not be suffered to tyrannize
It is our first duty to serve society.
We all live in the hope of pleasing somebody; and the pleasure of pleasing ought to be greatest, and always will be greatest, when our endeavors are exerted in consequence of our duty.
To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford
Dublin, though a place much worse than London, is not so bad as Iceland.
Prejudice not being funded on reason cannot be removed by argument.
Prudence keeps life safe, but it does not often make it happy.
Read your own compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
Of the innumerable authors whose performances are thus treasured up in magnificent obscurity (in a library), most are forgotten, because they never deserved to be remembered
The Supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things -- the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.
Sorrow is the rust of the soul and activity will cleanse and brighten it.
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.
Beauty has often overpowered the resolutions of the firm, and the reasonings of the wise, roused the old to sensibility, and subdued the rigorous to softness