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All imposture weakens confidence and chills benevolence.

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
Confidence
Imposture
Chills
Weakens
Benevolence
Chill
Deceit

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Study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves
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There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.
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I remember a passage in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.
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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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I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.
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I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
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It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
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Wise married women don't trouble themselves about infidelity in their husbands.
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He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed. The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich.
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A book should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it.
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A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company
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Since every man is obliged to promote happiness and virtue, he should be careful not to mislead unwary minds, by appearing to set too high a value upon things by which no real excellence is conferred.
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There is no idleness, by which we are so easily seduced, as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business, and by making the loiterer imagine that he has something to do which must not be neglected, keeps him in perpetual agitation, and hurries him rapidly from place to place.
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We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember.
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Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.
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If a man could say nothing against a character but what he can prove, history could not be written.
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Greece appears to be the fountain of knowledge Rome of elegance
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Life of Ages, richly poured, Love of God unspent and free, Flowing in the Prophet's word And the People's liberty! Never was to chosen race That unstinted tide confined Thine is every time and place, Fountain sweet of heart and mind!
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No wonder, Sir, that he is vain a man who is perpetually flattered in every mode that can be conceived. So many bellows have blown the fire, that one wonders he is not by this time become a cinder.
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Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
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