Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784)
British author, linguist and lexicographer.
No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
Ah! let not Censure term our fate our choice,
The stage but echoes back the public's voice;
The drama's laws the drama's patrons give,
For we that live to please must please to live.
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.
He was a very good hater.
He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
Let observation with extensive view
Survey mankind, from China to Peru.
A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.
The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.
Dr. Johnson was observed by a musical friend of his to be extremely inattentive at a concert, whilst a celebrated solo player was running up and down the divisions and subdivisions of notes upon his violin. His friend, to induce him to take greater notice of what was going on, told him how extremely difficult it was. 'Difficult, do you call it, Sir?' replied the Doctor; 'I wish it were impossible.'
As it is necessary not to invite robbery by supineness, so it is our duty not to suppress tenderness by suspicion; it is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
I [Boswell] was somewhat disappointed in finding that the edition of The English Poets, for which he was to write Prefaces and Lives, was not an undertaking directed by him: but that he was to furnish a Preface and Life to any poet the booksellers pleased. I asked him if he would do this to any dunce's works, if they should ask him.
JOHNSON: "Yes, Sir, and say he was a dunce."
The world is not yet exhausted: let me see something to-morrow which I never saw before.
A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.
No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had.
But it is evident, that these bursts of universal distress are more dreaded than felt; thousands and ten thousands flourish in youth, and wither in age, without the knowledge of any other than domestic evils, and share the same pleasures and vexations, whether their kings are mild or cruel, whether the armies of their country pursue their enemies or retreat before them.
To a poet nothing can be useless.
Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.
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.
It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm.