Quotes by Lexicographers - Page 4

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks is truth and every other man has a right to knock him down for it.
Samuel Johnson
When speculation has done its worst two and two still make four.
Samuel Johnson
John Wesley's conversation is good but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have his talk out as I do.
Samuel Johnson
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.
Samuel Johnson
The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.
Samuel Johnson
It is necessary to hope... for hope itself is happiness.
Samuel Johnson
One who has lost confidence can lose nothing more.
Pierre-Claude-Victor Boiste
As the Spanish proverb says 'He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.' So it is with traveling. A man must carry knowledge with him if he would bring home knowledge.
Samuel Johnson
When any fit of gloominess or perversion of mind lays hold upon you make it a rule not to publish it by complaints.
Samuel Johnson
Eat bread at pleasure drink wine by measure.
Randle Cotgrave
He who would make serious use of his life must always act as though he had a long time to live and schedule his time as though he were about to die.
Emile Littre
I know not why any one but a schoolboy in his declamation should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another.
Samuel Johnson
It is the just doom of laziness and a gluttony to be inactive without ease and drowsy without tranquillity.
Samuel Johnson
It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.
Samuel Johnson
The great would not think themselves demigods if the little did not worship them.
Pierre-Claude-Victor Boiste
If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand no doubt we should pity the state of his mind but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first and pity him afterwards.
Samuel Johnson
Pride is seldom delicate: it will please itself with very mean advantages.
Samuel Johnson
To improve the golden moment of opportunity and catch the good that is within our reach is the great art of life.
Samuel Johnson
Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. Prefer the short word to the long. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.
Henry Fowler
Your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.
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
That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.
Samuel Johnson
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Samuel Johnson
A man must carry knowledge with him if he would bring home knowledge.
Samuel Johnson
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef.
Samuel Johnson
None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence.
Samuel Johnson
The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us.
Samuel Johnson
(Adversity is) the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself being especially free from admirers then.
Samuel Johnson
Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken, themselves to errour. Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.
Samuel Johnson
While an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best.
Samuel Johnson
We are convinced that happiness is never to be found and each believes it possessed by others to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
Samuel Johnson
Nothing at all will be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Samuel Johnson
Every man who attacks my belief diminishes in some degree my confidence in it and therefore makes me uneasy and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.
Samuel Johnson
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Samuel Johnson
One of the disadvantages of wine is that is makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
Samuel Johnson
Men only become friends by community of pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
The Church does not superstitiously observe days, merely as days, but as memorials of important facts. Christmas might be kept as well upon one day of the year as another; but there should be a stated day for commemorating the birth of our Saviour, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected.
Samuel Johnson
There is no problem the mind of man can set that the mind of man cannot solve.
Samuel Johnson
The drama's laws the drama's patrons give. For we that live to please must please to live.
Samuel Johnson
I live in the crowds of jollity not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself.
Samuel Johnson
I can discover within me no power of perception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself delighted. Man has surely some latent sense for which this place affords no gratification, or he has some desires distinct from sense which must be satisfied before he can be happy.
Samuel Johnson
Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired.
Samuel Johnson
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to look at catalogues, and at the backs of books in libraries.
Samuel Johnson
Your manuscript is both good and original but the parts that are good are not original and the parts that are original are not good.
Samuel Johnson
Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
Samuel Johnson
Experiences is just paying attention as time passes.
Erin McKean
There is less flogging in our great schools than formerly but then less is learned there so that what the boys get at one end they lose at the other.
Samuel Johnson
The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.
Samuel Johnson
A dictionary should be descriptive not prescriptive.
Phillip Babcock Gove
The true art of memory, is the art of attention
Samuel Johnson
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.
Samuel Johnson
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.
Samuel Johnson
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it.
Samuel Johnson
Honor women! They strew celestial roses on the pathway of our terrestrial life.
Pierre-Claude-Victor Boiste
Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young.
Samuel Johnson
That friendship may be at once fond and lasting there must not only be equal virtue on each part but virtue of the same kind not only the same end must be proposed but the same means must be approved by both.
Samuel Johnson
If there is method here, it is hard to discern it. Let it be repeated: the use of capitals is a matter not or rules but of taste; but consistency is at least not a mark of bad taste.
H. W. Fowler
To be of no Church is dangerous.
Samuel Johnson
No mind is much employed upon the present recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments.
Samuel Johnson
The composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelting to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity.
Samuel Johnson