19 Samuel Johnson Quotes on Writing

Samuel Johnson quotes on writing

8. I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.

25. What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

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

43. A transition from an author's book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.

60. But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in few words.

64. ESSAY - A loose sally of the mind; an irregular indigested piece; not a regular and orderly composition.

93. Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty, could have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.

96. Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.

98. The Churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.

108. 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 all his faculties.

110. A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.

121. Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any high degree; only about as much as is used in the lower kinds of poetry.

139. Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

147. No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

179. No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had.

182. Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

183. My friend was of opinion that when a man of rank appeared in that character [as an author], he deserved to have his merit handsomely allowed.

191. A man might write such stuff for ever, if he would abandon his mind to it.

204. Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.