Quotes by Lexicographers - Page 4

The life of a conscientious clergyman is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain. I would rather have chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls.
Samuel Johnson
He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.
Samuel Johnson
No member of a society has a right to teach any doctrine contrary to what society holds to be true.
Samuel Johnson
Dictionaries are like watches. The worst is better than none at all and even the best cannot be expected to run quite true.
Samuel Johnson
A dictionary should be descriptive not prescriptive.
Phillip Babcock Gove
A lexicographer a writer of dictionaries a harmless drudge.
Samuel Johnson
The responsibility of a dictionary is to record a language not set its style.
Phillip Babcock Gove
To finish is both a relief and a release from an extraordinarily pleasant prison.
Robert Burchfield
The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.
Samuel Johnson
Promise large promise is the soul of an advertisement.
Samuel Johnson
Adversity has ever been considered as the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself being free from flatterers.
Samuel Johnson
He knows not his own strength who hath not met adversity.
Samuel Johnson
Adversity leads us to think properly of our state and so is most beneficial to us.
Samuel Johnson
(Adversity is) the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself being especially free from admirers then.
Samuel Johnson
The drama's laws the drama's patrons give. For we that live to please must please to live.
Samuel Johnson
Very few live by choice. Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight and with which he did not always willingly cooperate and therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his own.
Samuel Johnson
A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
Samuel Johnson
PU'RIST: one superstitiously nice in the use of words.
Samuel Johnson
NE'TWORK: Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.......RETI'CULATED: Made of network; formed with interstitial vacuities.
Samuel Johnson
Facts which were new to me were daily presenting themselves to my mind.
Noah Webster
If there is method here, it is hard to discern it. Let it be repeated: the use of capitals is a matter not or rules but of taste; but consistency is at least not a mark of bad taste.
H. W. Fowler
It is better to live rich than to die rich.
Samuel Johnson
To keep your secret is wisdom, but to expect others to keep it is folly.
Samuel Johnson
A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation
Samuel Johnson
[I]f the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded.
Noah Webster
A man sometimes starts up a patriot, only by disseminating discontent, and propagating reports of secret influence, of dangerous counsels, of violated rights, and encroaching usurpation. This practice is no certain note of patriotism. To instigate the populace with rage beyond the provocation, is to suspend public happiness, if not to destroy it. He is no lover of his country, that unnecessarily disturbs its peace.
Samuel Johnson
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson
Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind.
Samuel Johnson
The composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelting to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity.
Samuel Johnson
Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerales.
Samuel Johnson
There is no matter what children should learn first, any more than what leg you should put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the meantime your backside is bare. Sire, while you stand considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learn't 'em both.
Samuel Johnson
Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea?
Samuel Johnson
It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.
Samuel Johnson
Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
Samuel Johnson
We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
Samuel Johnson
Pleasure, in itself harmless, may become mischievous, by endearing to us a state which we know to be transient and probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts from that of which every hour brings us nearer to the beginning, and of which no length of time will bring us to the end. Mortification is not virtuous in itself, nor has any other use, but that it disengages us from the allurements of sense. In the state of future perfection, to which we all aspire, there will be pleasure without danger, and security without restraint.
Samuel Johnson
Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. Prefer the short word to the long. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.
Henry Fowler
No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred animadversion, than the negligence with which men overlook their own faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them, however frequently repeated.
Samuel Johnson
Unaffected modesty is the sweetest charm of female excellence, the richest gem in the diadem of her honor.
Noah Webster
The Church does not superstitiously observe days, merely as days, but as memorials of important facts. Christmas might be kept as well upon one day of the year as another; but there should be a stated day for commemorating the birth of our Saviour, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected.
Samuel Johnson
In that light, philosophy is not so much--or not simply--'the love of wisdom,' but instead marks the passage from wonder as a noun to wonder as a verb. Philosophy is the love of wisdom to the extent that it remains an incitement to it.
Michael Munro
Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
Samuel Johnson
Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.
Samuel Johnson
I look upon every day to be lost in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
Samuel Johnson
Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson
What cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.
Samuel Johnson
A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason.
Noah Webster
Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Samuel Johnson
Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson
A true smile is when the mouth and the heart coordinate with each other.
Barbara Ann Kipfer
If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.
Samuel Johnson
There is no problem the mind of man can set that the mind of man cannot solve.
Samuel Johnson
There iz no alternativ. Every possible reezon that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of wurds, stil exists in full force; and if a gradual reform should not be made in our language, it wil proov that we are less under the influence of reezon than our ance
Noah Webster
A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.
Samuel Johnson
I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
Samuel Johnson
We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinions because we very often differ from ourselves.
Samuel Johnson
A man who writes a book, thinks himself wiser or wittier than the rest of mankind; he supposes that he can instruct or amuse them, and the publick to whom he appeals, must, after all, be the judges of his pretensions.
Samuel Johnson
Honor women! They strew celestial roses on the pathway of our terrestrial life.
Pierre-Claude-Victor Boiste
Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.
Samuel Johnson