Book Quotes by Samuel Johnson

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

— Samuel Johnson

The best part of every author is in general to be found in his book, I assure you.

— Samuel Johnson

There is no book so poor that it would not be a prodigy if wholly made by a single man.

— Samuel Johnson

Women can spin very well; but they cannot make a good book of cookery.

— Samuel Johnson

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

— Samuel Johnson

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

— Samuel Johnson

Books have always a secret influence on the understanding.

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.

— Samuel Johnson

Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are…

— Samuel Johnson

You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which…

— Samuel Johnson

A transition from an author's book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city.

— Samuel Johnson

In my early years I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as…

— 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

Lectures were once useful; but now when all can read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary.

— Samuel Johnson

If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not…

— Samuel Johnson

People seldom read a book which is given to them; and few are given. The way to spread a work is to…

— Samuel Johnson

But to the particular species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or predominating humour, but by the first…

— Samuel Johnson

I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration,…

— Samuel Johnson

You need a good editor because every writer thinks he can write a War and Peace, but by the time he gets…

— Samuel Johnson

The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why;…

— Samuel Johnson

Exactness is first obtained, and afterwards elegance. But diction, merely vocal, is always in its childhood. As no man leaves his eloquence…

— 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

“A man who writes a book, thinks himself wiser or wittier than the rest of mankind; he supposes that he can instruct…

— Samuel Johnson

To exact of every man who writes that he should say something new, would be to reduce authors to a small number;…

— Samuel Johnson

Tradition is but a meteor, which, if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. Memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. But…

— Samuel Johnson

Human experience, which is constantly contradicting theory, is the great test of truth. A system, built upon the discoveries of a great…

— 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

When a language begins to teem with books, it is tending to refinement; as those who undertake to teach others must have…

— 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

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

— Samuel Johnson

Knowledge is praised and desired by multitudes whom her charms could never rouse from the couch of sloth; whom the faintest invitation…

— Samuel Johnson

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

— Samuel Johnson

Read the book you do honestly feel a wish and curiosity to read.

— Samuel Johnson

A book should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it.

— Samuel Johnson

Books without the knowledge of life are useless.

— Samuel Johnson

“A books should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it.”

— Samuel Johnson

Women can spin very well, but they cannot write a good book of cookery.

— Samuel Johnson

One of the amusements of idleness is reading without the fatigue of close attention; and the world therefore swarms with writers whose…

— Samuel Johnson

Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.

— Samuel Johnson