Quote #106

Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

More from Samuel Johnson

  1. The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
  2. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him …
  3. The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.
  4. Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs …
  5. He was a very good hater.
  6. I'll come no more behind your scenes, David [Garrick]; for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensi…
  7. If the man who turnips cries, Cry not when his father dies, 'Tis a proof that he had rather Have a turnip than his father.
  8. A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.

All Samuel Johnson quotes