Quotes by Lexicographers - Page 5

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
Samuel Johnson
Hell is paved with good intentions.
Samuel Johnson
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 in traveling: a man must carry knowledge with him if he would bring home knowledge.
Samuel Johnson
In all pleasure hope is a considerable part.
Samuel Johnson
While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
Samuel Johnson
Pleasure, in itself harmless, may become mischievous, by endearing to us a state which we know to be transient and probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts from that of which every hour brings us nearer to the beginning, and of which no length of time will bring us to the end. Mortification is not virtuous in itself, nor has any other use, but that it disengages us from the allurements of sense. In the state of future perfection, to which we all aspire, there will be pleasure without danger, and security without restraint.
Samuel Johnson
Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson
There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed to trace our own progress in existence by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.
Samuel Johnson
Marriage has many pains but celibacy has no pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
Samuel Johnson
No man ever yet became great by imitation.
Samuel Johnson
Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.
Samuel Johnson
When 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
Silence propagates itself and the longer talk has been suspended the more difficult it is to find anything to say.
Samuel Johnson
Unaffected modesty is the sweetest charm of female excellence, the richest gem in the diadem of her honor.
Noah Webster
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
Samuel Johnson
Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.
Samuel Johnson
In that light, philosophy is not so much--or not simply--'the love of wisdom,' but instead marks the passage from wonder as a noun to wonder as a verb. Philosophy is the love of wisdom to the extent that it remains an incitement to it.
Michael Munro
None are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing when we have made it the next wish is to change again.
Samuel Johnson
ALL words are made-up: Do you think we find them fully formed on the ocean floor, or mine from them in some remote part of Wales?
Kory Stamper
The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.
Samuel Johnson
The life of a conscientious clergyman is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls.
Samuel Johnson
Is not a patron one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help?
Samuel Johnson
Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.
Samuel Johnson
Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend.
Samuel Johnson
Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth and every other man has a right to knock him down for it.
Samuel Johnson
NE'TWORK: Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.......RETI'CULATED: Made of network; formed with interstitial vacuities.
Samuel Johnson
Dictionaries are like watches. The worst is better than none at all and even the best cannot be expected to run quite true.
Samuel Johnson
Example is more efficacious than precept.
Samuel Johnson
A man sometimes starts up a patriot, only by disseminating discontent, and propagating reports of secret influence, of dangerous counsels, of violated rights, and encroaching usurpation. This practice is no certain note of patriotism. To instigate the populace with rage beyond the provocation, is to suspend public happiness, if not to destroy it. He is no lover of his country, that unnecessarily disturbs its peace.
Samuel Johnson
Moderation is commonly firm and firmness is commonly successful.
Samuel Johnson
Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson
Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
Samuel Johnson
Is there such depravity in man as that he should injure another without benefit to himself?
Samuel Johnson
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
Samuel Johnson
An old friend never can be found and nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost.
Samuel Johnson
The best part of every author is in general to be found in his book I assure you.
Samuel Johnson
It has been observed in all ages that the advantages of nature or of fortune have contributed very little to the promotion of happiness; and that those whom the splendour of their rank, or the extent of their capacity, have placed upon the summits of human life, have not often given any just occasion to envy in those who look up to them from a lower station; whether it be that apparent superiority incites great designs, and great designs are naturally liable to fatal miscarriages; or that the general lot of mankind is misery, and the misfortunes of those whose eminence drew upon them an universal attention, have been more carefully recorded, because they were more generally observed, and have in reality only been more conspicuous than others, not more frequent, or more severe.
Samuel Johnson
You can never be wise unless you love reading.
Samuel Johnson
As the faculty of writing has chiefly been a masculine endowment the reproach of making the world miserable has always been thrown upon the women.
Samuel Johnson
When you write, you can hide behind your words. When you talk, you are up front, like the clown in the midway booth; and passersby can bean you with a ball.
Willard R. Espy
People have now a-days, (said he,) got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by lectures.—You might teach making of shoes by lectures!
Samuel Johnson
Read over your compositions and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine strike it out.
Samuel Johnson
That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition no vanity but a calm quiet interchange of sentiments.
Samuel Johnson
The joy of life is variety the tenderest love requires to be renewed by intervals of absence.
Samuel Johnson
A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason.
Noah Webster
Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind.
Samuel Johnson
He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.
Samuel Johnson
To enjoy and learn from what you read you must understand the meanings of the words a writer uses. You do yourself a grave disservice if you read around words you don’t know, or worse, merely guess at what they mean without bothering to look them up.For me, reading has always been not only a quest for pleasure and enlightenment but also a word-hunting expedition, a lexical safari.
Charles Harrington Elster
A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of everything.
Samuel Johnson
Friendship is a union of spirits a marriage of hearts and the bond there of virtue.
Samuel Johnson
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
Samuel Johnson
Had I learned to fiddle I should have done nothing else.
Samuel Johnson
The true genius is a mind of large general powers accidentally determined to some particular direction.
Samuel Johnson