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
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.
Do it now. You become successful the moment you start moving toward a worthwhile goal.
Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor.
Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.
Men who cannot deceive others are very often successful at deceiving themselves.
Moderation is commonly firm, and firmness is commonly successful.
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.
Each person's work is always a portrait of himself.
Every cold empirick, when his heart is expanded by a successful experiment, swells into a theorist.
A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write. The regard of the public is not to be kept but by tribute, and the remembrance of past service will quickly languish unless successive performances frequently revive it. Yet in every new attempt there is new hazard, and there are few who do not, at some unlucky time, injure their own characters by attempting to enlarge them.
Good sense alone is a sedate and quiescent quality, which manages its possessions well, but does not increase them; it collects few materials for its own operations, and preserves safety, but never gains supremacy.
Diligence in employments of less consequence is the most successful introduction to greater enterprises.
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford