Samuel Johnson Poet Quotations

Was ever poet so trusted before?

To a poet nothing can be useless.

[The poet] must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.

...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.

The business of the poet, said Imlac, is to examine, not the individual, but the species.

Poetry cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.

Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet.

A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, And touched nothing that he did not adorn.

The stream of Time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare.