Quote

Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger at his death.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Draw
Scoundrels
Draws
Charging
Morality
Trigger
Fire
Triggers
Half
Crown
Beggarly
Religion
Crowns
Scotsman
Death
Coward
Scotsmen
Left
Resolution
Scoundrel

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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When the eye or the imagination is struck with an uncommon work, the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was performed
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Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.
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Wit is that which has been often thought, but never before was well expressed.
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Since life itself is uncertain, nothing which has life for its basis can boast much stability.
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No knowledge is useless, with the exception of heraldry.
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We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
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It is much easier not to write like a man than to write like a woman.
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An author places himself uncalled before the tribunal of criticism and solicits fame at the hazard of disgrace.
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In order that all men might be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
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Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.
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[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.
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There is ... scarcely any species of writing of which we can tell what is its essence, and what are its constituents every new genius produces some innovation, which, when invented and approved, subverts the rules which the practice of foregoing authors had established.
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The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, were exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue.
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Hoc age ['do this'] is the great rule, whether you are serious or merry whether ... learning science or duty from a folio, or floating on the Thames. Intentions must be gathered from acts.
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As any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice.
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To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.
Samuel Johnson
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A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.
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A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.
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Fears of the brave and follies of the wise.
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He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
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