Samuel Johnson Quotes

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

A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.

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.

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 writer's 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.

This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

It is necessary to hope... for hope itself is happiness.

In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

Whoever thou art that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the Pyramids, and confess thy folly!

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

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.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

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.