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
He that tries to recommend (Shakespeare) by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in "Hierocles", who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen
I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.
The triumph of hope over experience.
Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
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.
I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.
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.
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
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