Samuel Johnson - A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

21 Sourced Quotes

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

Samuel Johnson
As any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice.

Samuel Johnson
Reason elevates our thoughts as high as the stars, and leads us through the vast space of this mighty fabric; yet it comes far short of the real extent of our corporeal being.

Samuel Johnson
CLUB — An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions.

Samuel Johnson
GRUBSTREET — The name of a street near Moorsfield, London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems.

Samuel Johnson
OATS — A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

Samuel Johnson
PATRON, n. One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is repaid in flattery.

Samuel Johnson
NETWORK — Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.

Samuel Johnson
Lampoon. A personal satire; abuse; censure written not to reform but to vex.

Samuel Johnson
LEXICOGRAPHER — A writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.

Samuel Johnson
I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.

Samuel Johnson
Network. Anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.

Samuel Johnson
The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

Samuel Johnson
But these were the dreams of a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer.

Samuel Johnson
A biographical incident; a minute passage of private life.

Samuel Johnson
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.

Samuel Johnson
EXCISE — A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.

Samuel Johnson
Patron. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery.

Samuel Johnson
Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.

Samuel Johnson
If the changes we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure.

Samuel Johnson
Pension. Pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.

Samuel Johnson