“It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.”
Of roast mutton served to him at an inn, June 3, 1784, p. 535
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV
“His conversation does not show the minute-hand, but he strikes the hour very correctly.”
Kearsley, 604
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Johnsoniana
July 21, 1763, p. 126
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I
“Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young.”
1772
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)
“Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.”
Preface http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/preface.html
A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
“I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.”
On his final illness, 1784, p. 566
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV
“A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.”
April 24, 1779, p. 424
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III
“Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.”
Actually said by Thomas Cooper, a U.S. politician.
Misattributed
“No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had.”
On Oliver Goldsmith1780
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV
Letter to Hester Thrale (5 July 1783) http://books.google.com/books?id=8JuiYLGldcsC&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=%22samuel+johnson%22+few+attacks+ridicule+invective+noise+provoke&source=web&ots=HMST_SM18L&sig=xovCcC2lKiTX9V0p61QvIC_yHW0&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result
1769
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)
1735
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I
“There Poetry shall tune her sacred voice,
And wake from ignorance the Western World.”
The Tragedy of Irene (1749), Act IV, Sc. 1
“This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.”
1763
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)
The Life of Cowley http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/lvwal10h.htm
Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)
“He was so generally civil that nobody thanked him for it.”
1777
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)
Letter http://books.google.com/books?id=yEA_AQAAMAAJ&q=%22small+debts+are+like+small+shot+they+are+rattling+on+every+side+and+can+scarcely+be+escaped+without+a+wound+great+debts+are+like+cannon+of+loud+noise+but+little+danger%22&pg=PA189#v=onepage to Joseph Simpson, circa 1759
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I