Who is samuel johnson?

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican and committed Tory, and has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is also the subject of "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature": James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.

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

    It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.
    Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

    Although Samuel had a depraved imagination—perhaps even because of this—love, for him, was less a matter of the senses than of the intellect. It was, above all, admiration and appetite for beauty; he considered reproduction a flaw of love, and pregnancy a form of insanity. He wrote on one occasion: “Angels are hermaphrodite and sterile.”
    Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)

    Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.
    —Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)