The diversion of baiting an author has the sanction of all ages and nations, and is more lawful than the sport of teasing other animals, because, for the most part, he comes voluntarily to the stake, furnished, as he imagines, by the patron powers of literature, with resistless weapons, and impenetrable armour, with the mail of the boar of Erymanth, and the paws of the lion of Nemea.
Samuel JohnsonI believe it will be found that those who marry late are best pleased with their children; and those who marry early, with their partners.
Samuel JohnsonEven those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding can expect only to improve a single science.
Samuel JohnsonSir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is better than admiration, - judgement, to estimate things at their true value.
Samuel JohnsonI am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.
Samuel Johnson