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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

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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
Others
Immediate
Incitement
Truth
Corruption
Credulity
Need
Faults
Forsake
Many
Indeed
Imposing
Needs
Ignorance
Convenience
Mankind
Evils
Present
Occur
Evil
Frequently

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No man can have much kindness for him by whom he does not believe himself esteemed, and nothing so evidently proves esteem as imitation.
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Golf is a game in which you claim the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood.
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Nothing is more common than for men to make partial and absurd distinctions between vices of equal enormity, and to observe some of the divine commands with great scrupulousness, while they violate others, equally important, without any concern, or the least apparent conciousness of guilt. Alas, it is only wisdom which perceives this tragedy.
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Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.
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What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
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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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How can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives
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He who is extravagant will quickly become poor and poverty will enforce dependence, and invite corruption.
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Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured.
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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
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All industry must be excited by hope.
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It is to be steadily inculcated, that virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness.
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When a man feel the reprehension of a friend seconded by his own heart, he is easily heated into resentment.
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We go from anticipation to anticipation, not from satisfaction to satisfaction.
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Idleness is often covered by turbulence and hurry. He that neglects his known duty and real employment naturally endeavours to crowd his mind with something that may bar out the remembrance of his own folly, and does any thing but what he ought to do with eager diligence, that he may keep himself in his own favour.
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To a poet nothing can be useless.
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We all live upon the hope of pleasing somebody, and the pleasure of pleasing ought to be greatest, and at last always will be greatest, when our endeavours are exerted in consequence of our duty.
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Babies do not want to hear about babies they like to be told of giants and castles.
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Life admits not of delays when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.
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The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another and each labors first to impose upon himself and then to propagate the imposture.
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