Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784)
British author, linguist and lexicographer.
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.
Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility.
Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,
And pause a while from learning to be wise.
There mark what ills the scholar's life assail —
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.
A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.
He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.
Worth seeing? yes; but not worth going to see.
I never have sought the world; the world was not to seek me.
I remember very well, when I was at Oxford, an old gentleman said to me, "Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowledge; for when years come upon you, you will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome task."
The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.
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!
'Paradise Lost' is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.
A cow is a very good animal in the field; but we turn her out of a garden.
There is a wicked inclination in most people to suppose an old man decayed in his intellects. If a young or middle-aged man, when leaving a company, does not remember where he laid his hat, it is nothing; but if the same inattention is discovered in an old man, people will shrug up their shoulders, and say, "His memory is going."
Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.
A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge. Consider, sir; what is the purpose of courts of justice? It is, that every man may have his cause fairly tried, by men appointed to try causes. A lawyer is not to tell what he knows to be a lie: he is not to produce what he knows to be a false deed; but he is not to usurp the province of the jury and of the judge, and determine what shall be the effect of evidence — what shall be the result of legal argument.
A man will turn over half a library to make one book.
That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.
It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know, because they have never deceived us.