His death eclipsed the gayety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.
Samuel JohnsonTo read, write, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters.
Samuel JohnsonNew arts are long in the world before poets describe them; for they borrow everything from their predecessors, and commonly derive very little from nature or from life.
Samuel JohnsonWine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
Samuel JohnsonDifference of thoughts will produce difference of language. He that thinks with more extent than another, will want words of a larger meaning; he that thinks with more subtilty will seek for terms of more nice discrimination; and where is the wonder, since words are but the images of things, that he who never knew the original should not know the copies?
Samuel Johnson