Samuel Johnson Quotes
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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.'
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Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.
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A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.
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OATS - A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.
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Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young.
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A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian,Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched,And touched nothing that he did not adorn.
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Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.
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Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanicks laughs at strength.
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Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition.
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Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.
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EXCISE - A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.
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GRUBSTREET - The name of a street near Moorsfield, London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems.
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For patience, sov'reign o'er transmuted ill.
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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.
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Superfluous lags the vet'ran on the stage.
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Sir, you have but two topicks, yourself and me. I am sick of both.
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You see they'd have fitted him to a T.
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Pleasure of itself is not a vice.
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From Thee, great God: we spring, to Thee we tend,Path, motive, guide, original, and end.
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Slavery is now no where more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.
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To a poet nothing can be useless.
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Then with no throbs of fiery pain,No cold gradations of decay,Death broke at once the vital chain,And freed his soul the nearest way.
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A man might write such stuff for ever, if he would abandon his mind to it.
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He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning.