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Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre

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
Staffordshire
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Terrestrial happiness is of short duration. The brightness of the flame is wasting its fuel the fragrant flower is passing away in its own odors.
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He that voluntarily continues in ignorance, is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces.
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Riches seldom make their owners rich.
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Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.
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No one will persist long in helping someone who will not help themselves.
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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.
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Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss.
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The belief of immortality is impressed upon all men, and all men act under an impression of it, however they may talk, and though, perhaps, they may be scarcely sensible of it.
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But to the particular species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and emulation.
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Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.
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Governors being accustomed to hear of more crimes than they can punish, and more wrongs than they can redress, set themselves at ease by indiscriminate negligence, and presently forget the request when they lose sight of the petitioner.
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It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.
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The faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are more dangerous, because the influence of his example is more extensive and the interest of learning requires that they should be discovered and stigmatized, before they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, and become precedents of indisputable authority.
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Dishonor waits on perfidy. A man should blush to think a falsehood it is the crime of cowards.
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Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings.
Samuel Johnson
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I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.
Samuel Johnson
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People may be taken in once, who imagine that an author is greater in private life than other men.
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Every man's affairs, however little, are important to himself.
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No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance.
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With what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that the time spent at the toilet is lost in vanity.
Samuel Johnson