An Essay On The Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson

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

“A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

“‘Twas something we knew all about to begin with
And needn’t have fared into space like his master
To find ‘twas the effort, the essay of love.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)

“There is in him, hidden deep-down, a great instinctive artist, and hence the makings of an aristocrat. In his muddled way, held back by the manacles of his race and time, and his steps made uncertain by a guiding theory which too often eludes his own comprehension, he yet manages to produce works of unquestionable beauty and authority, and to interpret life in a manner that is poignant and illuminating.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)

“Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers’ glory—to the archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth-century contrivance by which for a time it was served.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)

“What is the reason that women servants ... have much lower wages than men servants ... when in fact our female house servants work much harder than the male?”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)