Samuel Johnson (often referred to as Dr Johnson) was an English author. Beginning as a Grub Street （refering to mediocre, low-end) journalist, he made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican and political conservative. In the 19th century it was generally agreed that although Johnson himself was intereting, especially as a conversationalist, most of his works were unreadable. His poems were condemned as prosaic, his essays as tritely moralistic, his criticism as wrongheaded and tasteless. The case is altered today: a few of his poems, it is agreed, belong with he best of the 19th century; his criticism is ranked with that of Dryden and Samuel T. Coleridge as the best in English. After nine years of work, Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755; it had a far-reaching impact on Modern English and has been described as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship". The Dictionary brought Johnson popularity and success; until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary, 150 years later, Johnson's was viewed as the pre-eminent British dictionary. His later works included essays, an influential annotated edition of William Shakespeare's plays, and the widely read novel Rasselas. In 1763, he befriended James Boswell, with whom he later travelled to Scotland; Johnson described their travels in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Towards the end of his life, he produced the massive and influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, a collection of biographies and evaluations of 17th- and 18th-century poets.

Dr. S. Johnson's Quotations:

• A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him.
  
  
• Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.
  
  
• Curiocsity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.
  
  
• A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.
  
  
• A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.
  
  
• A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.
  
  
• A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself
  
  
• A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
  
  
• A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.
  
  
• A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.
  
  
• A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.
  
  
• A man will turn over half a library to make one book.
  
  
• Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.
  
  
• Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity
to use any of the others.

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

Exercise is labor without weariness.

Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.

He that undervalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and
skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Language is the dress of thought.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another,
forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

My dear friend, clear your mind of can't.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness;
it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing;
when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.

The future is purchased by the present.

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

Johnson's birthplace in Market Square of Lichfield, a city in Staffordshire, England.
(This work of art is in the publuc domain.)

Elizabeth Porter, Johnson's wife.
(This work of art is in the publuc domain.)

In the 18th and the early 19th century, Grub Street was the name of a street
in London's impoverished Moorfields district.
(This work of art is in publuc domain.)

In the autumn of 1735, Johnson opened Edial Hall School (an unsuccessful venture)
as a private academy at Edial, near Lichfield.
(This work of art is in the publuc domain.)

A caricature of Johnson by James Gillray (1757-1815) mocking him for his literary criticism;
he is shown doing penance for Apollo and the Muses with Mount Parnassus in the background.
(This work of art is in publuc domain.)

The Club was founded in February 1764 by the artist Joshua Reynolds
and essayist Samuel Johnson, a literary party. The nine original members were:
Joshua Reynolds, artist; Samuel Johnson, essayist, lexicographer; Edmund Burke,
writer, later M.P. ; Christopher Nugent; Topham Beauclerk; Bennet Langton;
Oliver Goldsmith, professor; Anthony Chamier; and John Hawkins, author.
(This work of art is in the publuc domain.)

Dr. Johnson's Statue at the Market Square of Lichfield. Photo by Villafanuk.
(This photo has been released into the public domain by the author.)