Best Quotations of Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson is perhaps the most quoted of English writers with the exception of Shakespeare. The latter part of the eighteenth century is often (in English-speaking countries, of course) called, simply, the Age of Johnson. It was agreed that England needed a first-rate dictionary, and Johnson undertook the job. In June 1746 he signed an agreement with a group of publishers. They would pay him 1575 pounds (all expenses to come out of this). With six copyists to help him, he read through numerous books by "standard authors" and marked their use of various words. His copyists then copied out the sentences onto slips of paper, underlining the word being illustrated, marked the slip with a large letter for the initial of the word, and filed it. Johnson then wrote definitions for over 40,000 words, with different shades of meaning, illustrating the meanings with about 114,000 quotations that he had gathered. His work has served as the basis for all English dictionaries since. The Dictionary was published in 1755. Oxford University rewarded him with a Master of Arts degree, which came in time for him to include it on the title page of the Dictionary.