Samuel Johnson Quotes About Poetry

• Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Poetry, Uniting

  Samuel Johnson (1822). “The Lives of the Most Eminent Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works”, p.120

• Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.

  Samuel Johnson

  Cutting, Rocks, Poetry

  To Hannah More, who had expressed a wonder that the poet who had written 'Paradise Lost' should write such poor Sonnets, in James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 4, p. 305 (13 June 1784)

• The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights.

  Samuel Johnson

  Essence, Poetry, Delight

  Samuel Johnson (1819). “The lives of the most eminent English poets, with critical observations on their works”, p.201

• Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.

  Samuel Johnson

  Light, Poetry, Easy

  In James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 3, p. 38 (12 April 1776)

• Wheresoe'er I turn my view,
  All is strange, yet nothing new:
  Endless labor all along,
  Endless labor to be wrong:
  Phrase that Time has flung away;
  Uncouth words in disarray,
  Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet,
  Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.

  Samuel Johnson

  Views, Poetry, Phrases

  Tobias George Smollett, Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith (1810). “The Poetical Works of Doctors Smollett, Johnson, and Goldsmith”, p.113

• The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Writing, Poetry

  Samuel Johnson (1977). “Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.304, Univ of California Press

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