Literary Birthday – 18 September – Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson was born 18 September 1709, and died 13 December 1784.

Samuel Johnson Quotes

1. I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
2. Those authors who would find many readers, must endeavour to please while they instruct.
3. In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.
4. What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
5. To read, write, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters.
6. It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.
7. I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.
8. A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.
9. Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty, could have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.
10. The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.
11. ‘Paradise Lost’ is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.
12. The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.

Samuel Johnson was an English poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755. It had a far-reaching effect on Modern English.

Source for Image

Public Domain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Samuel_Johnson_by_Joshua_Reynolds.jpg#filelinks

by Amanda Patterson

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