Quotes by Lexicographers

What cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.
Samuel Johnson
Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected even when it is associated with vice.
Samuel Johnson
We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinions because we very often differ from ourselves.
Samuel Johnson
Power is always right weakness always wrong. Power is always insolent and despotic.
Noah Webster
A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation
Samuel Johnson
Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.
Samuel Johnson
Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
Samuel Johnson
Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty sickness and captivity would without this comfort be insupportable.
Samuel Johnson
Friendship peculiar boon of Heaven The noble mind's delight and pride To men and angels only given To all the lower world denied.
Samuel Johnson
If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life he will soon find himself left alone.
Samuel Johnson
No one is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, their fondness for themselves.
Samuel Johnson
It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity.
Samuel Johnson
My congratulations to you, sir. 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.
Samuel Johnson
PU'RIST: one superstitiously nice in the use of words.
Samuel Johnson
The reasonableness of the command to obey parents is clear to children, even when quite young.
Noah Webster
A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity.
Samuel Johnson
He knows not his own strength who hath not met adversity.
Samuel Johnson
Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson
There are those who don't understand the nobility of horror fiction. 'Isn't there enough horror in the world?' they ask. For all other forms of literature, the value of human life is optional. For horror fiction, it's absolutely necessary. If we don't value the life of the threatened protagonist, we can't be scared. And through our fear, we better understand the individual fears and values of our species across the world.
Ebenezer Cobham Brewer
Tyranny is the exercise of some power over a man, which is not warranted by law, or necessary for the public safety. A people can never be deprived of their liberties, while they retain in their own hands, a power sufficient to any other power in the state.
Noah Webster
The foundation of all free government and all social order must be laid in families and in the discipline of youth. Young persons must not only be furnished with knowledge, but they must be accustomed to subordination and subjected to the authority and influence of good principles. It will avail little that youths are made to understand truth and correct principles, unless they are accustomed to submit to be governed by them.
Noah Webster
Language is the dress of thought.
Samuel Johnson
Promise large promise is the soul of an advertisement.
Samuel Johnson
While grief is fresh every attempt to divert it only irritates.
Samuel Johnson
There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.
Samuel Johnson
I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
Samuel Johnson
To finish is both a relief and a release from an extraordinarily pleasant prison.
Robert Burchfield
I have found men more kind than I expected and less just.
Samuel Johnson
To go and see one druidical temple is only to see that it is nothing, for there is neither art nor power in it; and seeing one is quite enough.
Samuel Johnson
Clear your mind of "can't."
Samuel Johnson
A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.
Samuel Johnson
Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
Samuel Johnson
Round numbers are always false.
Samuel Johnson
Kindness is in our power even when fondness is not.
Samuel Johnson
There iz no alternativ. Every possible reezon that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of wurds, stil exists in full force; and if a gradual reform should not be made in our language, it wil proov that we are less under the influence of reezon than our ance
Noah Webster
Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly!
Samuel Johnson
Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected even when it is associated with vice.
Samuel Johnson
Singing when no one else is around is always good. I especially like belters. Good, loud singing is probably better medicine than half the stuff they sell in pill bottles, and it's cheaper, too. I also think people should never turn down an opportunity to hold a baby. There's something about the feel of a new baby in your arms that just fixes you.
Erin McKean
That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem.
Samuel Johnson
Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea?
Samuel Johnson
The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.
Samuel Johnson
He left the name at which the world grew pale To point a moral or adorn a tale.
Samuel Johnson
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef love like being enlivened with champagne.
Samuel Johnson
Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.
Samuel Johnson
A true smile is when the mouth and the heart coordinate with each other.
Barbara Ann Kipfer
Oats n.s. A grain which in England is generally given to horses but in Scotland supports the people.
Samuel Johnson
Perhaps it's no coincidence that the word words is an anagram of sword. Well-used words cut through ambiguity and confusion like a sharp sword in the hands of an expert swordsman.
Anu Garg
Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
Samuel Johnson
A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
Samuel Johnson
Never speak of a man in his own presence. It is always indelicate and may be offensive .
Samuel Johnson
You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked ‘female’.
Erin McKean
Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerales.
Samuel Johnson
Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
Samuel Johnson
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
Samuel Johnson
Always set high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.
Samuel Johnson
There is no matter what children should learn first, any more than what leg you should put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the meantime your backside is bare. Sire, while you stand considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learn't 'em both.
Samuel Johnson
Despair is criminal.
Samuel Johnson
No member of a society has a right to teach any doctrine contrary to what society holds to be true.
Samuel Johnson
For a man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.
Samuel Johnson
A fly Sir may sting a stately horse and make him wince but one is but an insect and the other a horse still.
Samuel Johnson