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
History can be frmed from permanent monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost forever.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Biography
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
Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.
—Samuel Johnson
Such is the constitution of man, that labor may be styled its own reward.—Nor will any external incitements be requisite if it be considered how much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Exercise
The two great movers of the human mind are the desire of good, and the fear of evil.
—Samuel Johnson
Nothing can be truly great which is not right.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Greatness, Right
With an unquiet mind, neither exercise, nor diet, nor physick can be of much use.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Mind
Where there is no hope, there can be no endeavor.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Hope
Marriage is the strictest tie of perpetual friendship, and there can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity, and he must expect to be wretched, who pays to beauty, riches, or politeness that regard which only virtue and piety can claim.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Marriage
I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Kindness
Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Alcohol, Drinking, Wine
There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow; but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Sorrow, Sadness
We all live in the hope of pleasing somebody; and the pleasure of pleasing ought to be greatest, and always will be greatest, when our endeavors are exerted in consequence of our duty.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Pleasing
Virtue is too often merely local.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Virtues, Virtue
Pleasure that is obtained by unreasonable and unsuitable cost, must always end in pain.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Pain
It is better to live rich than to die rich.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Wealth
Admiration must be kept up by the novelty that at first produced it; and how much soever is given, there must always be the impression that more remains.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Admiration
A fishing pole is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool on the other
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Fools
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.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Prudence
When we see our enemies and friends gliding away before us, let us not forget that we are subject to the general law of mortality, and shall soon be where our doom will be fixed forever.
—Samuel Johnson
It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Marriage
He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Greatness & Great Things, Greatness
Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writers, Writing
This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Churches, Religion
I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep people from vice.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Humor
It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Confidence
Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Evangelism, Preaching
I wish there were some cure, like the lover’s leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Wishes
It is observed in the golden verses of Pythagoras, that power is never far from necessity. The vigor of the human mind quickly appears when there is no longer any place for doubt and hesitation, when diffidence is absorbed in the sense of danger, or overwhelmed by some resistless passion.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Necessity
He who endeavors to please must appear pleased.
—Samuel Johnson
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