Samuel Johnson

Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?

Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise! From Marlb'rough's eyes the streams of dotage flow, And Swift expires, a driv'ler and a show.

Superfluous lags the vet'ran on the stage.

An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay, And glides in modest innocence away.

"Enlarge my life with multitude of days!" In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays: Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know That life protracted is protracted woe.

He left the name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale.

A frame of adamant, a soul of fire, No dangers fright him, and no labors tire.

Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from learning to be wise. There mark what ills the scholar's life assail — Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.

But, scarce observ'd, the knowing and the bold Fall in the gen'ral massacre of gold.

Let observation with extensive view Survey mankind, from China to Peru.

Ah! let not Censure term our fate our choice, The stage but echoes back the public's voice; The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, For we that live to please must please to live.

Declamation roared, while Passion slept.

Cold approbation gave the ling'ring bays, For those who durst not censure, scarce could praise.

When learning's triumph o'er her barb'rous foes First reared the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose; Each change of many-colored life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new: Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting …

The richest author that ever grazed the common of literature.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.

A desire for knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every human being, whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all he has to get knowledge.

Let me rejoice in the light which Thou hast imparted; let me serve Thee with active zeal, humbled confidence, and wait with patient expectation for the time in which the soul which Thou receivest shall be satisfied with knowledge.

From Thee, great God: we spring, to Thee we tend, Path, motive, guide, original, and end.

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

Ignorance in other men may be censured as idleness, in an academick it must be abhorred as treachery.

Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.