Samuel Johnson (1709–84) was a British lexicographer, writer, critic, and conversationalist who made lasting contributions to English literature. Often referred to as Dr. Johnson, and regarded as the most significant intellectual in British history, he wrote many famous essays, sermons, poetry, biographies, literary criticisms, plays, and novels.
Johnson started writing in his mid-20s, publishing essays, poems, and prose. During his 30s, he contributed more than 200 essays to magazines and launched his colossal undertaking: an authoritative A Dictionary of the English Language (1755.) With the help of six clerical assistants, Johnson completed the lexicon in nine years. Published in two volumes, it contained more than 42,000 entries. This dictionary made Johnson famous, and it remains his most enduring accomplishment.
Despite his prodigious literary output, Johnson is most remembered not for anything he wrote, but for the biography that James Boswell (1740–95) composed of Johnson. Boswell idolized Johnson and kept scrupulously detailed diaries of his mannerisms, characteristics, routines, decisions, opinions, and everything else about his life. Boswell used these notes to write a comprehensive biography, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791.) Owing to its thorough portrayal of its subject as a complete person and not just as a catalog of events and achievements in his life, The Life of Samuel Johnson is regarded the definitive precursor to modern biographies. Boswell’s records of Johnson’s numerous aphorisms also made him one of the most-quoted writers in the English language.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Samuel Johnson
We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because for a time they are not remembered; he may, therefore, justly be numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences that may early be impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to occur habitually to the mind.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Proverbs, Quotations, Proverbial Wisdom
Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance.—He that shall walk, with vigor, three hours a day, will pass, in seven years, a space equal to the circumference of the globe.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Strength, Perseverance, Endurance, Persistence, Resolve
To tell our own secrets is generally folly, but that folly is without guilt; to communicate those with which we are intrusted is always treachery, and treachery for the most part combined with folly.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Secrecy
There is nothing too little for so little a creature as man.—It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Happiness, Little Things, Things
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
—Samuel Johnson
Prosperity is too apt to prevent us from examining our conduct, but adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Difficulties, Prosperity, Adversity
Life, like every other blessing, derives its value from its use alone. Not for itself, but for a nobler end the eternal gave it; and that end is virtue.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Life, Blessings
Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.
—Samuel Johnson
I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Government
It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.
—Samuel Johnson
Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: America
Depend upon it, that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him: for where there is nothing but pure misery, there never is any mention of it.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Complaints, Misfortune, Fortune, Pessimism, Misfortunes, Complaining
No man was ever great by imitation.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Character, Imitation
That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not only be equal virtue on each part, but virtue of the same kind; not only the same end must be proposed, but the same means must be approved by both.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Friendship
At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Aging, Age
The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Kindness, Compassion
The man who threatens the world is always ridiculous; for the world can easily go on without him, and, in a short time, will cease to miss him.
—Samuel Johnson
As the mind must govern the hands, so in every society the man of intelligence must direct the man of labor.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Mind
Poverty, in large cities, has very different appearances. It is often concealed in splendor, and often in extravagance. It is the care of a great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest. They support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for tomorrow.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Poverty
Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Simplicity
It is much easier to design than to perform. A man proposes his schemes of life in a state of abstraction and disengagement, exempt from the enticements of hope, the solicitations of affection, the importunities of appetite, or the depressions of fear, and is in the same state with him that teaches upon land the art of navigation, to whom the sea is always smooth, and the wind always prosperous.
—Samuel Johnson
A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs. A Judge may play a little at cards for his own amusement; but he is not to play at marbles, or chuck farthing in the Piazza.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Judging, Judgment, Judges
If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Determination, Perseverance
The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Reading
He was so generally civil that nobody thanked him for it.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Temper
Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others… This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Drinking, Alcohol, Wine, Words
Catch, then, oh catch the transient hour;
Improve each moment as it flies!
Life’s a short summer, man a flower;
He dies – alas! how soon he dies.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Carpe-diem
Never, my dear Sir, do you take it into your head that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and my esteem; I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of exemplary piety.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Friendship
Books (says Bacon) can never teach the use of books; the student must learn by commerce with mankind to reduce his speculations to practice. No man should think so highly of himself as to suppose he can receive but little light from books, nor so meanly as to believe he can discover nothing but what is to be learned from them.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Books
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.
—Samuel Johnson
Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Future, Cheating, The Future
He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.
—Samuel Johnson
There is no part of history so generally useful as that which relates to the progress of the human mind, the gradual improvement of reason, the successive advances of science, the vicissitudes of learning and ignorance, the extinction and resuscitation of arts, and the revolutions of the intellectual world.—If accounts of battles and invasions are peculiarly the business of princes, the useful and elegant arts are not to be neglected, and those who have kingdoms to govern have understandings to cultivate.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: History
Foppery is never cured; it is of the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, are never rectified.—Once a coxcomb, always a coxcomb.
—Samuel Johnson
A merchant may, perhaps, be a man of an enlarged mind, but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Mind
I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Friendship
No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others, will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excites our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Worth
Conjecture as to things useful is good; but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, such as whether men ever went upon all-fours, is very idle.
—Samuel Johnson
Assertion is not argument; to contradict the statement of an opponent is not proof that you are correct.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Beliefs
The great source of pleasure is variety.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Pleasure
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