Samuel Johnson Quotes
-
Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty, could have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
-
The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.
-
Was there ever yet any thing written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress?
-
Declamation roared, while Passion slept.
-
His conversation does not show the minute-hand, but he strikes the hour very correctly.
-
To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.
-
The first years of man must make provision for the last.
-
My friend was of opinion that when a man of rank appeared in that character as an author, he deserved to have his merit handsomely allowed.
-
PENSION - An allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.
-
I Boswell happened to say, it would be terrible if he should not find a speedy opportunity of returning to London, and be confined in so dull a place. JOHNSON: 'Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters. It would not be terrible, though I were to be detained some time here.'
-
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.
-
A very unclubable man.
-
Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties.
-
It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.
-
But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.
-
I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.
-
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.
-
It is seldom that we find either men or places such as we expect them. ... Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.
-
Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.
-
New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.
-
That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.
-
Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young.
-
OATS - A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.
-
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.