Samuel Johnson Quotes

Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.

Superfluous lags the vet'ran on the stage.

Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.

Hawkesworth said of Johnson, "You have a memory that would convict any author of plagiarism in any court of literature in the world."

The true Genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.

Catch then, O! 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!

A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian,
Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched,
And touched nothing that he did not adorn.

Human life is every where a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

As I know more of mankind, I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly.

Shakespeare's plays are not in the rigorous and critical sense either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting the real state of sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow, mingled with endless variety of proportion and innumerable modes of combination; and expressing the course of the world, in which the loss of one is the gain of another; in which, at the same time, the reveller is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in which the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the frolick of another; and many mischiefs and many benefits are done and hindered without design.

The pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted, and the mind can only repose on the stability of truth.

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.

GRUBSTREET — The name of a street near Moorsfield, London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems.

NETWORK — Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.

Wine makes a man more pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.