Samuel Johnson Quotes About Speculation

• When speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four.

  Samuel Johnson

  Inspirational, Humility, Two

  The Idler

• It is not difficult to conceive, however, that for many reasons a man writes much better than he lives. For without entering into refined speculations, it may be shown much easier to design than to perform. A man proposes his schemes of life in a state of abstraction and disengagement, exempt from the enticements of hope, the solicitations of affection, the importunities of appetite, or the depressions of fear.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Men, Design

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.25

• We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure.

  Samuel Johnson

  Intellectual, Perception, Matter

  'The Lives of the English Poets' (1779-81) 'Milton'

• Books, says Lord Bacon, can never teach us the use of books; the student must learn by commerce with mankind to reduce his speculations to practice. No man should think so highly of himself as to think he can receive but little light from books; no one so meanly, as to believe he can discover nothing but what is to be learned from them.

  Samuel Johnson

  Believe, Book, Men

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