Quotes from Samuel Johnson

AC  (AC) AK, or AKE. Being initials in the names of places, as  Acton, signify an oak, from the Saxon ac, an oak. Gibson's Camden.

ADRY  (ADRY')   adv.[from a and dry.]Athirst; thirsty; in want of drink. He never told any of them, that he was his humble servant, but his well-wisher; and would rather be thought a malecontent, than drink the king's health when he was not adry.Spect.

APHÆRESIS  (APHÆ'RESIS)   n.s.[   figure in grammarthat takes away a letter or syllable from the beginning of a word.

AMBAGES  (AMBA'GES)   n.s.[Lat.]A circuit of words; a circumlocutory form of speech; a multiplicity of words; an indirect manner of expression.

ACATALECTIC  (ACATALE'CTIC)   n.s.[  Gr.]A verse which has the compleat number of syllables, without defect or superfluity.

A books should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation or animate enterprise.

The chief advantage which these fictions have over real life is, that their authors are at liberty, though not to invent, yet to select objects, and to cull from the mass of mankind, those individuals upon which the attention ought most to be employed; as a diamond, though it cannot be made, may be polished by art, and placed in such a situation, as to display that luster which before was buried among common stones.

His genius was belowThe skill of ev'ry common beau;Who, tho' he cannot spell, is wiseEnough to read a lady's eyes;And will each accidental glanceInterpret for a kind advance.Swift'sMiscell.

You never find people labouring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful fortune. -- So you hear people talking how miserable a King must be; and yet they all wish to be in his place.

Odes were the compositions in which he took most delight, and it was long before he liked his Epistles and Satires. He told me what he read solidly at Oxford was Greek; not the Grecian historians, but Homer and Euripides, and now and then a little Epigram; that the study of which he was the most fond was Metaphysicks, but he had not read much, even in that way.

those who wish for distinction forsake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right;

The cherubim were never intended as an object of worship, because they were only the appendices to another thing. But a thing is then proposed as an object of worship, when it is set up by itself, and not by way of addition or ornament to another thing.Stillingfleet'sDefence of Discourses on Romish Idolatry.

Normandy became an appendix to England, the nobler dominion, and received a greater conformity of their laws to the English, that they gave to it.Hale'sCivil Law of England.2. An

Those who take little thought find it easy to pronounce an opinion. - On Optimism

ADAMANT  (A'DAMANT)   n.s.[adamas, Lat. from Gr. that is, insuperable, infrangible.]1. A stone, imagined by writers, of impenetrable hardness. So great a fear my name amongst them

ABLUENT  (A'BLUENT)   adj.[abluens, Lat. from abluo, to wash away.]1. That which washes clean.2. That which has the power of cleansing.Dict.

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 a book.

APOPHASIS  (APO'PHASIS)   n.s.[Lat.    a denying.] A figure in rhetorick, by which the orator, speaking ironically, seems to wave what he would plainly insinuate; as, Neither will I mention those things, which if I should, you notwithstanding could neither confute or speak against them.Smith'sRhetorick.

To ACCEND  (ACCE'ND)   v.a.[accendo, Lat.]To kindle, to set on fire; a word very rarely used. Our devotion, if sufficiently accended, would, as theirs, burn up innumerable books of this sort.Decay of Piety.

The Roman tyrant was content to be hated, if he was but feared; and there are thousands of the readers of romances willing to be thought wicked, if they may be allowed to be wits.

ACCEPTATION  (ACCEPTA'TION)   n.s.[from accept.]1. Reception, whether good or bad. This large sense seems now wholly out of use.

ACCEPTILATION  (ACCEPTILA'TION)   n.s.[acceptilatio, Lat.]A term of the civil law,importing the remission of a debt by an acquittance from the creditor, testifying the receipt of money which has never been paid.

All knowledge is of itself of some value. There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not.