Samuel Johnson Quotes About School

• There is less flogging in our great schools than formerly-but then less is learned there; so what the boys get at one end they lose at the other.

  Samuel Johnson

  Education, Learning, School

  In James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 2, p. 407 (1775)

• Nothing has so exposed men of learning to contempt and ridicule as their ignorance of things which are known to all but themselves. Those who have been taught to consider the institutions of the schools as giving the last perfection to human abilities are surprised to see men wrinkled with study, yet wanting to be instructed in the minute circumstances of propriety, or the necessary form of daily transaction; and quickly shake off their reverence for modes of education which they find to produce no ability above the rest of mankind.

  Samuel Johnson

  School, Ignorance, Men

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “Works”, p.420

• No wise man will go to live in the country, unless he has something to do which can be better done in the country. For instance, if he is to shut himself up for a year to study science, it is better to look out to the fields, than to an opposite wall. Then, if a man walks out in the country, there is nobody to keep him from walking in again: but if a man walks out in London, he is not sure when he will walk in again. A great city is, to be sure, the school for studying life.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wise, Country, Wall

  Samuel Johnson, James Boswell (1825). “The Table Talk of Dr. Johnson: Comprising Opinions and Anecdotes of Life and Literature, Men, Manners, and Morals”, p.132

• I know not why any one but a school boy in his declamation would whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they were rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves and of one another.

  Samuel Johnson

  School, Boys, Rome

  Samuel Johnson (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.”, p.473

• Those authors are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence.

  Samuel Johnson

  School, Prudence, Axioms

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The works of the English poets, from Chaucer to Cowper: including the series edited with prefaces, biographical and critical”, p.277

• More is learned in a public than in a private school, from emulation. There is the collision of mind with mind, or the radiation of many minds pointing to one center.

  Samuel Johnson

  School, Mind, Radiation

  James Boswell, Alexander Napier, Richard Duppa, Robina Napier, Samuel Johnson (1884). “The life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D. Together with the journal of a tour to the Hebrides: James Boswell”

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