Samuel Johnson Quotes

OATS — A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

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

LEXICOGRAPHER — A writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.

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

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.

ESSAY — A loose sally of the mind; an irregular indigested piece; not a regular and orderly composition.

CLUB — An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions.

It is the fate of those, who toil at the lower employments of life, to be rather driven by the fear of evil, than attracted by the prospect of good; to be exposed to censure, without hope of praise; to be disgraced by miscarriage, or punished for neglect, where success would have been without applause, and diligence without reward. Among these unhappy mortals is the writer of dictionaries, whom mankind have considered, not as the pupil, but the slave of science, the pioneer of literature, doomed only to remove rubbish and clear obstructions from the paths through which Learning and Genius press forward to conquest and glory, without bestowing a smile on the humble drudge that facilitates their progress. Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.

I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.

But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in few words.

But the truth is, that no man is much regarded by the rest of the world, except where the interest of others is involved in his fortune. The common employments or pleasures of life, love or opposition, loss or gain, keep almost every mind in perpetual agitation. If any man would consider how little he dwells upon the condition of others, he would learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself.

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.

The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.

That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.