Johnson quotes

You are a philosopher, Dr Johnson. I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.

- Oliver Edwards
  In conversation with Dr  Johnson,17  Apr. Quoted in  James Boswell Life of Samuel Johnson (1791).

Dr Johnson's morality was as English an article as a beefsteak.

- Nathaniel Hawthorne
  Our Old Home.

Johnson approached a strongly fortified position by outflanking it, or burrowing under it, or surprising the defenders from the rear, or raining down obstacles upon them from the sky, or starving them into submission† Rarely, and then only reluctantly, would he proceed directly from A to B, to him the shortest distance between two points was a tunnel.

-William Raymond Manchester
  Of Lyndon B  Johnson. The Death of a President.

   Think of the heroism of Johnson, think of that superb indifference to mortal limitation that set him upon his dictionary, and carried him through triumphantly until the end! Who, if he were wisely considerate of things at large, would ever embark upon any work much more considerable than a halfpenny post-card? Who would project a serial novel, afterThackeray and Dickens had each fallen in mid-course? Who would find heart enough to begin to live, if he dallied with the consideration of death?

- Robert Louis Stevenson
Virginibus Puerisque,'AesTriplex'.

Ispenttwo hourswiththat great man,Dr Johnson, who is sinking into the grave bya gentle decay.

-John Wesley
  Journal entry,18 Dec.

Chafing in action when his nature yearned to act, conscious of indignitiesreal and imagined,Johnsonwent through three years of slow burn.

-Theodore H(arold) White
Of Lyndon B Johnson as John F Kennedy'sVice President. Quoted in Arthur M Schlesinger, Jr AThousand Days (1965).