2,116 Quotes by Samuel Johnson

He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.

The solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad: the mind stagnates for want of employment, grows morbid, and is extinguished like a candle in foul air.

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!

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.

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.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

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

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

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.