Samuel Johnson Quotes


To grieve for evils is often wrong; but it is much more wrong to grieve without them. All sorrow that lasts longer than its cause is morbid, and should be shaken off as an attack of melancholy, as the forerunner of a greater evil than poverty or pain.


Citations

Johnson, Samuel. Letters to and from the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Edited by Hester Lynch Piozzi, vol. 2, A. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1788.

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Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
  • Born: September 18, 1709
  • Died: December 13, 1784
  • Nationality: English
  • Profession: Poet, Playwright, Essayist, Moralist, Literary Critic, Biographer, Editor, Lexicographer

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".