Writing Quotes by Samuel Johnson

Allegories drawn to great length will always break.

— Samuel Johnson

“Never trust a man who writes more than he reads.”

— Samuel Johnson

In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.

— Samuel Johnson

By writing, you learn to write.

— Samuel Johnson

“Every author does not write for every reader”

— Samuel Johnson

If you want to be a writer, then write. Write every day!

— Samuel Johnson

Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults.

— Samuel Johnson

A lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.

— Samuel Johnson

What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written.

— Samuel Johnson

About the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets.

— Samuel Johnson

He who writes much will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of particular modes as may be easily noted.

— Samuel Johnson

...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.

— Samuel Johnson

“In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species.”

— Samuel Johnson

To read, write, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters.

— Samuel Johnson

Nay, Sir, those who write in them, write well, in order to be paid well.

— Samuel Johnson

In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.

— Samuel Johnson

I look upon this as I did upon the Dictionary: it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love…

— Samuel Johnson

It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation from habit; he that has once studiously developed a style, rarely writes afterwards with…

— Samuel Johnson

When people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer their inferior while he is with them, it must…

— Samuel Johnson

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a…

— Samuel Johnson

The liberty of the press is a blessing when we are inclined to write against others, and a calamity when we find…

— Samuel Johnson

Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former…

— Samuel Johnson

A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a…

— Samuel Johnson

There are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame.

— Samuel Johnson

Works of imagination excel by their allurement and delight; by their power of attracting and detaining the attention. That book is good…

— Samuel Johnson

Few of those who fill the world with books, have any pretensions to the hope either of pleasing or instructing. They have…

— Samuel Johnson

It is, however, not necessary, that a man should forbear to write, till he has discovered some truth unknown before; he may…

— Samuel Johnson

Consultation and compliance can conduce little to the perfection of any literary performance; for whoever is so doubtful of his own abilities…

— Samuel Johnson

It is not difficult to conceive, however, that for many reasons a man writes much better than he lives. For without entering…

— Samuel Johnson

We owe few of the rules of writing to the acuteness of critics, who have generally no other merit than that, having…

— Samuel Johnson

A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write. The regard…

— Samuel Johnson

No writer can be fully convicted of imitation except there is a concurrence of more resemblance than can be imagined to have…

— Samuel Johnson

It is justly considered as the greatest excellency of art to imitate nature; but it is necessary to distinguish those parts of…

— Samuel Johnson

Among those whose reputation is exhausted in a short time by its own luxuriance are the writers who take advantage of present…

— Samuel Johnson

Nothing detains the reader's attention more powerfully than deep involutions of distress, or sudden vicissitudes of fortune; and these might be abundantly…

— Samuel Johnson

To write is, indeed, no unpleasing employment, when one sentiment readily produces another, and both ideas and expressions present themselves at the…

— Samuel Johnson

Truth, like beauty, varies its fashions, and is best recommended by different dresses to different minds; and he that recalls the attention…

— Samuel Johnson

By the consultation of books, whether of dead or living authors, many temptations of petulance and opposition, which occur in oral conferences,…

— Samuel Johnson

The task of an author is, either to teach what is not known, or to recommend known truths by his manner of…

— Samuel Johnson

“Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his…

— Samuel Johnson