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
It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.
Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
Oats. A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.
This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.
He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.
A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.
I am a hardened and shameless tea drinker, who has, for twenty years, diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and, with tea, welcomes the morning.
Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else.
Cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.
One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
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.