A Quote by Samuel Johnson

Language is the dress of thought; and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy

Samuel Johnson

Quote Topics

Action Degraded Dress Efficacy Graceful Gross Language Lose Mechanics Most Noblest Sentiments Thought Will Would Would Be

Quote Author

Samuel Johnson
English - Writer
September 18, 1709 - December 13, 1784

The instinctive and universal taste of mankind selects flowers for the expression of its finest sympathies, their beauty and their fleetingness serving to make them the most fitting symbols of those delicate sentiments for which language itself seems almost too gross a medium.

George Stillman Hillard

Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

George Lakoff

The columbine ... is a graceful slender creature, a female seeking retirement, and growing freest and most graceful where it is most alone. I observed that the more shaded plants were always the tallest.

Dorothy Wordsworth

I do plead with the mothers of Zion to undertake modesty in dress. We may like to follow the fashion, but let us follow it in modesty. The most precious thing that a girl has is her modesty and if she preserves this in dress, in speech, in action, it will arm, and protect her as nothing else will. But let her lose her modesty, and she becomes a victim of those who pursue her, as the hare is of the hound; and she will not be able to stand unless she preserves her modesty.

L. Tom Perry

To require conformity in the appreciation of sentiments or the interpretation of language, or uniformity of thought, feeling, or action, is a fundamental error in human legislation -- a madness which would be only equaled by requiring all men to possess the same countenance, the same voice or the same stature.

Josiah Warren

What do we value most? What would we most hate to lose? What do our thoughts turn to most frequently when we are free to think of what we will? And finally, what affords us the greatest pleasure?

Aiden Wilson Tozer

I'm not the most delicate - I'm not the most graceful person, and I like playing a sport where being not delicate and not graceful is actually a good thing.

Mary McCormack

The pure and noble, the graceful and dignified, simplicity of language is nowhere in such perfection as in the Scriptures and Homer. The whole book of Job, with regard both to sublimity of thought and morality, exceeds, beyond all comparison, the most noble parts of Homer.

Alexander Pope

The usual method of creation for most human beings is a three-step process involving thought, word, and deed or action. First comes thought; the formative idea; the initial concept. Then comes the word. Most thoughts ultimately form themselves into words, which are often then written or spoken. This gives added energy to the thought, pushing it out into the world, where it can be noticed by others. Finally, in some cases words are put into action, and you have what you call a result; a physical world manifestation of what all started with a thought.

Neale Donald Walsch

Isn’t the most sensitive point of this mourning the fact that I must lose a language — the amorous language? No more ‘I love you’s.

Roland Barthes

Most pesticides lose their efficacy after a few years, because of pest resistance to pesticides. This is why companies go on changing the varieties.

M. S. Swaminathan

Law, in its most general and comprehensive sense, signifies a rule of action; and is applied indiscriminately to all kinds of action, whether animate, or inanimate, rational or irrational. Thus we say, the laws of motion, of gravitation, of optics, or mechanics, as well as the laws of nature and of nations. And it is that rule of action, which is prescribed by some superior, and which the inferior is bound to obey.

William Blackstone

Most people of action are inclined to fatalism and most of thought believe in providence.

David Viscott

The story was such that I couldn't make a graceful ending and then make a graceful new beginning. I could have, but I didn't want to. So, it isn't the most graceful way of writing a story. This new story is, I think, is pretty good stuff. I'm pleased with it anyway.

Jack Vance

The tea ceremony requires years of training and practice ... yet the whole of this art, as to its detail, signifies no more than the making and serving of a cup of tea. The supremely important matter is that the act be performed in the most perfect, most polite, most graceful, most charming manner possible.