Samuel Johnson Quotes - Page 70

• I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.

  Samuel Johnson

  Running, Reality, Ideas

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1799). “Boswell's Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides, and Johnson's Diary of A Journey Into North Wales”, p.390

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• Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

  Samuel Johnson

  Judging, Criticism, Firsts

  Samuel Johnson (2011). “Dictionary of the English Language (Complete and Unabridged)”, p.2341, BookBaby

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• Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance.

  Samuel Johnson

  Ignorance, Pure

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 1755)

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• False taste is always busy to mislead those that are entering upon the regions of learning; and the traveller, uncertain of his way, and forsaken by the sun, will be pleased to see a fainter orb arise on the horizon, that may rescue him from total darkness, though with weak and borrowed lustre.

  Samuel Johnson

  Ignorance, Darkness, Horizon

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.148

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• Nothing has so exposed men of learning to contempt and ridicule as their ignorance of things which are known to all but themselves. Those who have been taught to consider the institutions of the schools as giving the last perfection to human abilities are surprised to see men wrinkled with study, yet wanting to be instructed in the minute circumstances of propriety, or the necessary form of daily transaction; and quickly shake off their reverence for modes of education which they find to produce no ability above the rest of mankind.

  Samuel Johnson

  School, Ignorance, Men

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “Works”, p.420

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• Genius is that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates.

  Samuel Johnson

  Inspirational, Energy, Genius

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An essay on his life and genius”, p.169

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• I am willing to love all of mankind, except an American.

  Samuel Johnson

  Love, Energy, Environment

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 15 Apr. 1778)

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• Turn on the prudent
  Ant, thy heedful eyes,
  Observe her labours,
  Sluggard, and be wise.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wise, Eye, Laziness

  "The poems of Samuel Johnson".

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• No, Sir, you will have much more influence by giving or lending money where it is wanted, than by hospitality.

  Samuel Johnson

  Giving, Hospitality, Influence

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson”, p.153

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• Of many, imagined blessings it may be doubted whether he that wants or possesses them had more reason to be satisfied with his lot.

  Samuel Johnson

  Blessing, May, Want

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1834). “Murphy's essay. The rambler. The adventurer. The idler. Rasselas. Tales of the imagination. Letters. Irene. Miscellaneous poems”, p.342

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• ...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Poet, Labor

  Samuel Johnson (1854). “Lives of the British Poets: In Four Volumes”, p.244

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• Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Faults

  Samuel Johnson, Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay (1854). “Lives of the most eminent English poets: with critical observations on their works”, p.223

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• To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.

  Samuel Johnson

  Friendship, Wise, Silence

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson”, p.106

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• He said that few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forgo the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive how to fill the interval between dinner and supper.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wine, People, Intellectual

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• He who aspires to be a serious wine drinker must drink claret.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wine, Serious, Drink

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• Lectures were once useful; but now when all can read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Teaching, Lectures

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson”, p.69

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• It seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.

  Samuel Johnson

  Sleep, Doors, Law

  Samuel Johnson (2012). “Lives of the Poets”, p.119, tredition

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• I deny the lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of alarming him; you have no business with consequences, you are to tell the truth.

  Samuel Johnson

  Truth, Lying, Men

  Samuel Johnson, James Boswell (1818). “The table talk of Samuel Johnson”, p.100

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• I know not why any one but a school boy in his declamation would whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they were rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves and of one another.

  Samuel Johnson

  School, Boys, Rome

  Samuel Johnson (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.”, p.473

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