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
No greater felicity can genius attain than that of having purified intellectual pleasure, separated mirth from indecency, and wit from licentiousness
Around his tomb let Art and Genius weep / But hear his death, ye blockheads! hear and sleep.
No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius.
Genius is that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates.
A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.
The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.
Remember that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity long continued will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible.
It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called, by the generality of mankind, a particular genius.
Genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies and animates.
Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject.
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.