18 September—We celebrate Samuel Johnson’s 314^th birthday today. He’d be celebrating too, had he not died when he was 75. He’s known as Dr. Johnson because even though lack of funds forced him to leave Oxford University without a degree, he was awarded an MA just before publication of his dictionary and honorary doctorates by Oxford and Trinity College Dublin afterward.

Dr. Johnson is best known for his idiosyncratic, curmudgeonly—but none the less brilliant and groundbreaking—A Dictionary of the English Language; and A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, a similarly idiosyncratic and curmudgeonly—somewhat less brilliant but ground-covering—travelogue.

In Litchfield, of course, Dr. Johnson is celebrated(?) as having been born in Lichfield, a city in Staffordshire, England, allegedly the namesake of all the Litchfields in the United States.

Dr. Johnson’s best-remembered (most well-remembered, as semi-literates say today) one-liner graces The Monitor’s masthead: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”

Next most well-remembered is his brilliantly pointed, entirely accurate observation: “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

Then there are many, many more, still relevant today, including:

“When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind
wonderfully.”

“Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.”

“Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and
the part that is original is not good.”

“What is easy is seldom excellent.”

“Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.”

“No man was ever great by imitation.”

“Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.”

“When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.”

“Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it.”

“Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.”

“Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.”

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no
good.”

“Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes
acquainted with himself.”

“A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself”.

“Words are but the signs of ideas.”

“Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.”

“Books, like friends, should be few and well-chosen.”

“There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting
money.”

“Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.”

“Actions are visible, though motives are secret.”

“What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.”

And this truism, relevant only to those who have suffered Milton: “Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.”