Samuel Johnson's health has been a focus of the biographical and critical analysis of his life. His medical history was well documented by Johnson and his friends, and those writings have allowed later critics and doctors to infer diagnoses of conditions that were unknown in Johnson's day.
His health and conditions had "damaging effects on Johnson's personal and professional lives" likely causing him to lose opportunities to teach at prominent schools, while leading him "towards the invisible occupation of authorship".
Read more about Samuel Johnson's Health: Posthumous Diagnosis, Literary References
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“Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favourable to virtue.... Remember that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Do all that your mind inclines to. I am with you; as your mind is, so is mine.”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Samuel 14:7.
“Johnson did not answer ...; but talking for victory and determined to be master of the field, he had recourse to the device which Goldsmith imputed to him in the witty words of one of Cibber’s comedies. “There is no arguing with Johnson; for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.””
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Woman ... cannot be content with health and agility: she must make exorbitant efforts to appear something that never could exist without a diligent perversion of nature. Is it too much to ask that women be spared the daily struggle for superhuman beauty in order to offer it to the caresses of a subhumanly ugly mate?”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)