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There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
Linguist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
Teacher
Translator
Writer
Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Good
Whose
Always
Community
Pain
Eagerness
Part
Nearest
Care
Impatience
Littles
Reaches
Little
Immediate
Every
Large

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No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.
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Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation.
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He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.
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Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings.
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Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.
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A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write.
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Was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress?
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If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination.
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A fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot.
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The violence of war admits no distinction the lance, that is lifted at guilt and power, will sometimes fall on innocence and gentleness.
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Good-humor is a state between gayety and unconcern,--the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another.
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The equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.
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The civilities of the great are never thrown away.
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Spring is the season of gaiety, and winter of terror in spring the heart of tranquility dances to the melody of the groves, and the eye of benevolence sparkles at the sight of happiness and plenty: in winter, compassion melts at universal calamity, and the tear of softness starts at the wailing of hunger and the cries of the creation in distress
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Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.
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Men go to sea, before they know the unhappiness of that way of life and when they have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession as indeed is generally the case with men, when they have once engaged in any particular way of life.
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When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.
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Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.
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