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
If a man is in doubt whether it would be better for him to expose himself to martyrdom or not, he should not do it. He must be convinced that he has a delegation from heaven.
I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.
A man who is good enough to go to heaven is not good enough to be a clergyman.
Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one.
Leave to Heaven the measure and the choice.
Your first great duties, you are sensible, are those you owe to Heaven, to your Creator and Redeemer. Let these be ever present to your minds, and exemplified in your lives and conduct.
In all evils which admit a remedy, impatience should be avoided, because it wastes that time and attention in complaints which, if properly applied, might remove the cause
The age being now past of vagrant excursion and fortuitous hostility, he was under the necessity of travelling from court to court, scorned and repulsed as a wild projector, an idle promiser of kingdoms in the clouds; nor has any part of the world y
Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.
If I were punished for every pun I shed, there would not be left a puny shed of my punnish head
I'll come no more behind your scenes, David; for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities
It was not for me to bandy civilities with my Sovereign
No man forgets his original trade: the rights of nations and of kings sink into questions of grammar, if grammarians discuss them
Nothing is to be expected from the workman whose tools are for ever to be sought