Samuel Johnson Quotes
To do nothing is in everyone's power.
Johnson, Samuel. The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. F. C. and J. Rivington, 1823.
See Robert Burton {596290} for an earlier view with which Jefferson was probably familiar.
Describing George W. Bush whom he had supported four years earlier:
Samuel Johnson, often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. Religiously, he was a devout Anglican, and politically a committed Tory. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes Johnson as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is the subject of James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, described by Walter Jackson Bate as "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature".
