An Essay On The Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson

Famous quotes containing the words samuel johnson, essay, life, genius, samuel and/or johnson:

“I told him that Goldsmith had said,... “As I take my shoes from the shoemaker, and my coat from the taylor, so I take my religion from the priest.” I regretted this loose way of talking. JOHNSON. Sir, he knows nothing; he has made up his mind about nothing.””
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

“A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in, not out.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)

“Being so wrong about her makes me wonder now how often I am utterly wrong about myself. And how wrong she might have been about her mother, how wrong he might have been about his father, how much of family life is a vast web of misunderstandings, a tinted and touched-up family portrait, an accurate representation of fact that leaves out only the essential truth.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)

“His genius does not soar like Milton’s, but is genial and familiar. It shows great tenderness and delicacy, but not the heroic sentiment. It is only a greater portion of humanity with all its weakness.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

“Perhaps Samuel Johnson was a great man; he was certainly a drumbling one.”
—Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)

“Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)