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Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.
Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
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Lichfield
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More quotes by Samuel Johnson
We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor
Samuel Johnson
Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use.
Samuel Johnson
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.
Samuel Johnson
Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal.
Samuel Johnson
Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.
Samuel Johnson
This is my history like all other histories, a narrative of misery.
Samuel Johnson
The labor of rising from the ground will be great, ... but as we mount higher, the earth's attraction, and the body's gravity, will be gradually diminished till we arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall.
Samuel Johnson
Our minds should not be empty because if they are not preoccupied by good, evil will break in upon them.
Samuel Johnson
I will take no more physick, not even my opiates for I have prayed that I may render up my soul to God unclouded.
Samuel Johnson
The wickedness of a loose or profane author is more atrocious than that of a giddy libertine or drunken ravisher, not only because it extends its effects wider, as a pestilence that taints the air is more destructive than poison infused in a draught, but because it is committed with cool deliberation.
Samuel Johnson
Wickedness is always easier than virtue for it takes the short cut to everything.
Samuel Johnson
Pleasure itself is not a vice
Samuel Johnson
A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.
Samuel Johnson
Each person's work is always a portrait of himself.
Samuel Johnson
Almost all the moral good which is left among us is the apparent effect of physical evil.
Samuel Johnson
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.
Samuel Johnson
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
Samuel Johnson
We have now learned that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking credit let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily restrained from giving it.
Samuel Johnson
There are indeed, in the present corruption of mankind, many incitements to forsake truth: the need of palliating our own faults and the convenience of imposing on the ignorance or credulity of others so frequently occur so many immediate evils are
Samuel Johnson
Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject.
Samuel Johnson
