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
He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.
—Samuel Johnson
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Reading, Books
Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Reading, Books
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
In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
—Samuel Johnson
An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.
—Samuel Johnson
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
Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from time to come.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Happiness
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
Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Hope
A man guilty of poverty easily believes himself suspected.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Poverty
There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Confidence, Love, Honesty, Integrity, Friendship
He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Bravery, Self-Control, Courage, Discipline
Marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Marriage
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
—Samuel Johnson
Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Virtue, Virtues
The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Sleep, Day
A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Reading, Books
It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Nature, Death
Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Doubt, Success & Failure, Achievement, Risk-taking
A man may be so much of every thing, that he is nothing of any thing.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Self-Discovery
Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Evil, Attitude, Helpfulness
It is better to live rich than to die rich.
—Samuel Johnson
Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.
—Samuel Johnson
The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Value, Values
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
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
—Samuel Johnson
He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
—Samuel Johnson
We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found; and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Opportunities, Happiness, Reality
The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Praise
It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Trust, Suffering
The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Writing
Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Desire, Appreciation, Blessings, Desires, Gratitude
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Effort
If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Idleness, Solitude
Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Knowledge
Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Self-Discovery
Sorrow is mere rust of the soul; activity will cleanse and brighten it.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Action, Sorrow
The vicious count their years; virtuous, their acts.
—Samuel Johnson
Topics: Helping
It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.
—Samuel Johnson
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