Quotes About Johnson

The verb 'to install' is spelt thus, but 'to reinstal' with a single /. Such anomalies were his to resolve. His failure to do so has proved lasting: it is thanks to Johnson that the opposite of ''moveable' is commonly written 'immovable', and thanks to him, too, that one person can 'deign' to do what another 'disdains' to do. Of

FROM AN EARLY date Johnson's intellectual interests were fostered in the family bookshop. It was there that he learned the geography of both company and solitude—in the society of his father's customers, and in the privacy of his reading. In 1706 Michael bought the library of the late William Stanley, ninth Earl of Derby, which comprised almost 3,000 volumes.

In other words, at the time of Johnson's death in 1784, and thirty years after its first publication, there were about 6,000 copies of the complete English editions of the Dictionary in circulation, in addition to a few hundred copies

Johnson was not impressed. He conceded that the letters might have made a 'very pretty' book (the faintest of faint praise), then commented, stingingly, that they 'teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master'. 8 Here, as in the famous letter and the Dictionary's entry under 'patron', Chesterfield's errors are more lastingly preserved than any of his achievements. There

While we are in the realm of comedy, it is worth recalling that one of the best and best-known episodes of the historical sitcom Blackadder, titled 'Ink and Incapability', confronts this very subject. Its fidelity to history is limited (Jane Austen is Johnson's contemporary, and apparently has 'a beard like a rhododendron'), but its representation of the perils of lexicography is just. The

The Dictionary's definitions of 'Whig' and 'Tory' are well known. 'Whig' is 'the name of a faction', whereas 'Tory' is 'one who adheres to the ancient constitution of the state, and the apostolical hierarchy of the Church of England, opposed to a Whig'. This leaves one in little doubt of Johnson's political allegiance.

Where the makers of modern dictionaries strive for uniformity, Johnson was quite happy to vary the size of his entries. Although some of his definitions of natural phenomena are lean, many are lengthy, even opulent, reflecting the contemporary love affair with unusual flora and fauna. Here more than anywhere he strays towards an encyclopedic approach, and the Dictionary begins to resemble, at least fleetingly, a herbal and a bestiary.

Johnson loathed cucumbers: he held with the old-fashioned view that 'a cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing'. Boiled

In his entry under the verb 'to antedate', Johnson quotes the essayist Jeremy Collier: 'By reading, a man does, as it were, antedate his life, and makes himself contemporary with the ages past.' It is Johnson's engagement with the past and his revival of a diffuse pot-pourri of materials that make the Dictionary such an unexpectedly vibrant work. At

I have never, ever sought validation from the arbiters of British poetic taste.

Once I found out that track and field was an organized sport, the era I followed more closely was that of Maurice Greene and Michael Johnson.

Notably, Johnson thereby had backed Ben Gitlow's testimony regarding where and when this new tactical line had started: in Moscow in 1935. And the ultimate goal was not Christian salvation, of course, but the "final salvation" of a socialist revolution

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

Don Johnson announces he is leaving Miami, dealing a severe blow to the area's hopes to repeat as winner of the Biggest Cockroach Contest.

I had worked in politics with Johnson and Nixon before becoming a historian and biographer. I kept discovering these dirtier, murkier threads in American politics that led back to Vegas' gambling interests and criminal connections.

Samuel Johnson: A book should either allow us to escape existence or teach us how to endure it .

I don't mind fighting Vitor or anybody else they give me. I don't care.

I think that for most readers the best critique of Johnson's view and the claims of intelligent-design creationism is Robert T. Pennock's Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999)

Johnson had a sense of humor, and he could kid with me," he would say. "Johnson didn't enjoy talking with most liberals. He didn't think they had a sense of humor.

Cop tricks pale in comparison with mother tricks.

everything to do with women is foolish and, therefore, absolutely essential.

Always follow the money; rendering unto Caesar what is his may not be pleasurable, but the records are great.

stop groaned with the wind that had

It is one of your most annoying traits." He opened his eyes, and the weight of them lay upon me like darkness. "Please