The Quotability of Samuel Johnson

A tip of the hat to Gretchen Rubin for pointing me in the direction of Samuel Johnson with her Happiness Project quote du jour…

On this basis, my top five people who have featured most often in Quote … Unquote questions (as opposed to having just been quoted on the programme, which would be too big a task to measure) turn out to be: (1) Winston Churchill (2) Oscar Wilde (3) Noel Coward (4) Bernard Shaw (5) Mark Twain. No sign of Dr Johnson there, I’m afraid.
Then one of the readers of the Quote … Unquote Newsletter came along with his list of people who had featured most often in that Newsletter (and I have to emphasize that this was usually because of some issue regarding their quotations), and this gave a slightly different result, namely: Churchill (first), Wilde (second), Shaw and G.K. Chesterton (joint 4th), Mark Twain and P.G. Wodehouse (joint 6th). Samuel Johnson came 8th in that list.
Then, I counted up the number of quotations attributed to this sort of quotee (again I emphasize written and spoken quotees) in the latest editions of the two major dictionaries of quotations, the Oxford and Bartlett’s Familiar (in the United States). And what do you think I found?
In the Oxford, giving you the results in Miss World order, we have: in fifth place, Thomas Jefferson with 50 quotations, fourth, Winston Churchill with 53, third, Oscar Wilde with 61, second, a stonking 105 from Bernard Shaw, and in first place, with no fewer than 254, from Lichfield, England, Dr Samuel Johnson.
Turning to Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, and again giving you the results in reverse order, we find: in fifth place with 48 quotations, Oscar Wilde, in fourth place, a new entry, Abraham Lincoln with 51, in third place, with 61, Winston Churchill, shooting up the charts to No. 2, with 83 quotations, Mark Twain, and – I hardly need tell you – this week’s, this year’s No. 1, the top of the quotation pops for all time, with 142 quotations, your own, your very own, Samuel Johnson. Gratifyingly, however you measure it, it’s game, set and match to Dr Johnson.
The next question that must be addressed is, Why is Johnson the most all-round quoted source apart from the Bible and Shakespeare? If you define a quotation, as I will, as: ‘Something written or spoken by another that we wish to use for our own ends because it expresses something memorably and well’, then I need hardly go any further. Apart from the truths and wisdom that they contain, Dr Johnson’s quotations are so memorably phrased that they cry out to be repeated until the end of time.
Does a gentleman who marries a second time show disregard of his first wife? ‘Not at all, Sir. On the contrary, were he not to marry again, it might be concluded that his first wife had given a disgust to marriage; but by taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by shewing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.’
Johnson had a very positive view of marriage (though it is easily forgotten that he was himself a widower), hence his remark, ‘Even ill assorted marriages are preferable to cheerless celibacy’ – that’s in the Life – and ‘Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures’ – which is in Rasselas.
`If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman’ – and then he adds: ‘But she should be one who could understand me, and would add something to the conversation.’
Then there is the famous piece of advice he gave Boswell, who was having landlord trouble and considered it a ‘serious distress’. Johnson told him: ‘There is nothing in this mighty misfortune … Consider, Sir, how insignificant this will appear a twelvemonth hence.’ Which, frankly, is the best piece of advice you can give anybody.

Source: The Quotability of Samuel Johnson

Go to the source if you’re curious to know more about this most quotable of all authors…