Quotes
Quotes - Johnson
I never have sought the world; the world was not to seek me.
He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dullness in others.
You see they 'd have fitted him to a T.
I have found you an argument; I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.
Blown about with every wind of criticism.
If the man who turnips cries
Cry not when his father dies,
'T is a proof that he had rather
Have a turnip than his father.
He was a very good hater.
The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
Books that you may carry to the fire and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.
Round numbers are always false.
As with my hat upon my head
I walk'd along the Strand,
I there did meet another man
With his hat in his hand.
Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.
The limbs will quiver and move after the soul is gone.
Hawkesworth said of Johnson, "You have a memory that would convict any author of plagiarism in any court of literature in the world."
His conversation does not show the minute-hand, but he strikes the hour very correctly.
Hunting was the labour of the savages of North America, but the amusement of the gentlemen of England.
I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.
This world, where much is to be done and little to be known.
Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.
A fellow that makes no figure in company, and has a mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar-cruet.
The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honourable gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience.
Towering in the confidence of twenty-one.
