Samuel Johnson Quotes about Poetry

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Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

Samuel Johnson

Art, Poetry, Uniting

Samuel Johnson (1822). “The Lives of the Most Eminent Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works”, p.120

Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.

Samuel Johnson

Light, Poetry, Easy

In James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 3, p. 38 (12 April 1776)

Wheresoe'er I turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new: Endless labor all along, Endless labor to be wrong: Phrase that Time has flung away; Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.

Samuel Johnson

Views, Poetry, Phrases

Tobias George Smollett, Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith (1810). “The Poetical Works of Doctors Smollett, Johnson, and Goldsmith”, p.113

Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.

Samuel Johnson

Cutting, Rocks, Poetry

To Hannah More, who had expressed a wonder that the poet who had written 'Paradise Lost' should write such poor Sonnets, in James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 4, p. 305 (13 June 1784)