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
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
Revenge is the act of passion, vengeance is an act of justice.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Revenge, Vengeance
To hear complaints is tiresome to the miserable and the happy.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Pessimism, Complaints, Complaining
That observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: World
It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Equality
Dishonor waits on perfidy.—A man should blush to think a falsehood; it is the crime of cowards.
—Samuel Johnson
Among those whom I never could persuade to rank themselves with idlers, and who speak with indignation of my morning sleeps and nocturnal rambles, one passes the day in catching spiders, that he may count their eyes with a microscope; another exhibits the dust of of a marigold separated from the flower with a dexterity worthy of Leuwenhoeck himself. Some turn the wheel of electricity; some suspend rings to a load stone, and find that what they did yesterday, they can do again today.—Some register the changes of the wind, and die fully convinced that the wind is changeable.—There are men yet more profound, who have heard that two colorless liquors may produce a color by union, and that two cold bodies will grow hot if they are mingled: they mingle them, and produce the effect expected, say it is strange, and mingle them again.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Idleness
The safe and general antidote against sorrow, is employment. It is commonly observed, that among soldiers and seamen, though there is much kindness, there is little grief; they see their friend fall without that lamentation which is indulged in security and idleness, because they have no leisure to spare from the care of themselves; and whoever shall keep his thoughts equally busy, will find himself equally unaffected by irretrievable losses.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Employment
Every man is of importance to himself.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Self-Discovery
The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Memories, Memory
To act from pure benevolence is not possible for finite beings. Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest or some other motive.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Kindness
Round numbers are always false.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Statistics
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
—Samuel Johnson
He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Ambition
More knowledge may be gained of a man’s real character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Knowledge
Social sorrow loses half its pain.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Sorrow
No member of society has the right to teach any doctrine contrary to what society holds to be true.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Censorship
It is foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Friendship
At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Aging, Age
You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury—you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Luxury
Hope is the chief blessing of man; and that hope only is rational of which we are sensible that it cannot deceive us.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Hope
Sir, I have no objection to a man’s drinking wine, if he can do it in moderation. I found myself apt to go to excess in it, and therefore, after having been for some time without it, on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it. Every man is to judge for himself, according to the effects which he experiences.
—Samuel Johnson
Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Simplicity
Many things difficult in design prove easy in performance.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Performance, Planning, Design
Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Prudence, Safety, Risk, Security
Marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Marriage
A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Alcohol, Alcoholism
Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Idleness
A short letter to a distant friend is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation—a proof of unwillingness to do much, even where there is a necessity of doing something.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Letters
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Books, Reading
No man likes to live under the eye of perpetual disapprobation.
—Samuel Johnson
There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Gratitude, Obligation
I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Apathy, Indifference
A fly may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Cruelty
The balls of sight are so formed, that one man’s eyes are spectacles to another, to read his heart with.
—Samuel Johnson
He that has a home, and a family, has given hostages to the community for good citizenship, but he that has no such connecting interests, is exposed to temptation, to idleness, and in danger of becoming useless, if not a burden and a nuisance in society.
—Samuel Johnson
You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not – silence is the sharper sword.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Silence
Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess, and to gain applause which he cannot keep.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Affectation
If what happens does not make us richer, we must welcome it if it makes us wiser.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Experience
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Expectation, Anticipation, Wealth
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