2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Exactness is first obtained, and afterwards elegance. But diction, merely vocal, is always in its childhood. As no man leaves his eloquence behind him, the new generations have all to learn. There may possibly be books without a polished language, but there can be no polished language without books.

When a language begins to teem with books, it is tending to refinement; as those who undertake to teach others must have undergone some labour in improving themselves, they set a proportionate value on their own thoughts, and wish to enforce them by efficacious expressions; speech becomes embodied and permanent; different modes and phrases are compared, and the best obtains an establishment. By degrees one age improves upon another.

Knock the ‘t’ off the ‘can’t.’

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 a book.

The drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give. For we that live to please must please to live.

Language is the dress of thought; and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy.

In misery’s darkest cavern known, His useful care was ever nigh Where hopeless anguish pour’d his groan, And lonely want retir’d to die.

Friendship, peculiar boon of Heaven, The noble mind’s delight and pride, To men and angels only given, To all the lower world denied.

Each person’s work is always a portrait of himself.