Quotes by Samuel Johnson

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.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

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

The greatest part of a writers time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.

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.

To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.

Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.

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.

There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not know it.

Ignorance, when voluntary, is criminal, and a man may be properly charged with that evil which he neglected or refused to learn how to prevent.

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!

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life . . . the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

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.

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.

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.

No one is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, their fondness for themselves.

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.