Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Quotes

• I have found you an argument: but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

• A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.

• Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.

• Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.

• An injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.

• Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.

• Our aspirations are our possibilities.

• Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

• Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.

• There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.

• No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

• 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.

• Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.

• A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

• Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

• Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.

• Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.

• Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." But let it be considered that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self- interest.

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

• Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.