Samuel Johnson
British lexicographer and literary critic
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Thus, my Lord, will our language be laid down, distinct in its minutest subdivisions, and resolved into its elemental principles. And who upon this survey can forbear to wish, that these fundamental atoms of our speech might obtain the firmness and immutability of the primogenial and constituent particles of matter, that they might retain their substance while they alter their appearance, and be varied and compounded, yet not destroyed?
But this is a privilege which words are scarcely to expect: for, like their author, when they are not gaining strength, they are generally losing it. Though art may sometimes prolong their duration, it will rarely give them perpetuity; and their changes will be almost always informing us, that language is the work of man, of a being from whom permanence and stability cannot be derived.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, The Plan of an English Dictionary, 1747
Posted on January 17, 2006 at 5:44 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Who will consider that no dictionary of a living tongue ever can be perfect, since, while it is hastening to publication, some words are budding, and some falling away; that a whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and etymology, and that even a whole life would not be sufficient; that he, whose design includes whatever language can express, must often speak of what he does not understand.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755
Posted on February 18, 2004 at 9:18 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1783
Posted on November 25, 2003 at 11:06 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
There is one subject of philosophical curiosity to be found in Edinburgh ... a college of the deaf and dumb, who are taught to speak, to read, to write, and to practice arithmetick. They not only speak, write, and understand what is written, but if he that speaks looks towards them, and modifies his organs by distinct and full utterance, they know so well what is spoken, that it is an expression scarcely figurative to say, they hear with the eye.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, 1773
Posted on December 24, 1999 at 8:00 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
The language most likely to continue long without alteration, would be that of a nation raised a little, and but a little, above barbarity, secluded from strangers, and totally employed in procuring the conveniencies of life; either without books, or ... with very few: men thus busied and unlearned, having only such words as common use requires, would perhaps long continue to express the same notions by the same signs. But no such constancy can be expected in a people polished by arts, and classed by subordination, where one part of the community is sustained and accommodated by the labour of the other. Those who have much leisure to think, will always be enlarging the stock of ideas, and every increase of knowledge, whether real or fancied, will produce new words, or combinations of words.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755
Posted on May 3, 2000 at 11:35 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, The Idler, 1758
Posted on August 3, 2000 at 11:15 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
It must be remembered, that while our language is yet living, and variable by the caprice of every one that speaks it, these words are hourly shifting their relations, and can no more be ascertained in a dictionary, than a grove, in the agitation of a storm, can be accurately delineated from its picture in the water.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755
Posted on December 13, 1999 at 2:16 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few. I have, notwithstanding this discouragement, attempted a Dictionary of the English Language, which, while it was employed in the cultivation of every species of literature, has itself been hitherto neglected; suffered to spread, under the direction of chance, into wild exuberance; resigned to the tyranny of time and fashion; and exposed to the corruptions of ignorance, and caprices of innovation.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755
Posted on January 12, 2001 at 7:54 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, and clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and affectation.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755
Posted on December 7, 2000 at 3:14 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Every increase of knowledge, whether real or fancied, will produce new words, or combination of words. When the mind is unchained from necessity, it will range after convenience; when it is left at large in the fields of speculation, it will shift opinions; 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, British lexicographer and literary critic, Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755
Posted on August 15, 2000 at 11:33 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, The Idler, 1758
Posted on October 28, 1998 at 11:53 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791
Posted on July 13, 1999 at 8:07 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
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 only 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, British lexicographer and literary critic
Posted on October 17, 2002 at 11:24 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791
Posted on January 7, 2003 at 7:50 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
There may be other reasons for a man's not speaking in publick than want of resolution: he may have nothing to say.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791
Posted on July 1, 2002 at 6:18 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, Works of Samuel Johnson, 1787
Posted on September 9, 2002 at 9:18 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Read your own compositions, and when you meet with a passage which you think is particlarly fine, strike it out.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791
Posted on September 17, 2002 at 8:56 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, A Dictionary of the English Language
Posted on July 22, 2003 at 7:39 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, A Dictionary of the English Language
Posted on March 26, 2003 at 8:49 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, The Letters of Samuel Johnson
Posted on August 14, 2001 at 5:36 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigree of nations.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, From James Boswell, Tour to the Hebrides
Posted on July 6, 2001 at 11:00 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1783
Posted on May 28, 2001 at 5:02 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, A Dictionary of the English Language
Posted on May 30, 2002 at 3:19 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Language is the dress of thought.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic
Posted on February 13, 2002 at 7:42 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth and that things are the sons of heaven.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755
Posted on January 30, 2002 at 11:45 PM
|
