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To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.

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
Duty
Hear
Even
Duties
Complaints
Vain
Patience
Friendship

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Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.
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The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion.
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It is man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.
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Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.
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To excite opposition and inflame malevolence is the unhappy privilege of courage made arrogant by consciousness of strength.
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A book should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it.
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He who sees different ways to the same end, will, unless he watches carefully over his own conduct, lay out too much of his attention upon the comparison of probabilities and the adjustment of expedients, and pause in the choice of his road, till some accident intercepts his journey.
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The difference between coarse and refined abuse is the difference between being bruised by a club and wounded by a poisoned arrow.
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The end of writing is to instruct the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing.
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A man should be careful never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage. People may be amused at the time, but they will be remembered, and brought out against him upon some subsequent occasion.
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It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination.
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Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn. [Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.]
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Poetry cannot be translation
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I believe it will be found that those who marry late are best pleased with their children and those who marry early, with their partners.
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To scatter praise or blame without regard to justice is to destroy the distinction of good and evil. Many have no other test of actions than general opinion and all are so far influenced by a sense of reputation that they are often restrained by fear of reproach, and excited by hope of honour, when other principles have lost their power.
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In the condition of men, it frequently happens that grief and anxiety lie hid under the golden robes of prosperity and the gloom of calamity is cheered by secret radiations of hope and comfort as in the works of nature, the bog is sometimes covered with flowers, and the mine concealed in the barren crags.
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