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A soldier's time is passed in distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption.

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
Distress
Corruption
Passed
Soldier
Danger
Time
Idleness

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Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words.
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Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.
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The habit of looking on the bright side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year.
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What I gained by being in France was learning to be better satisfied with my own country.
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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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Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new.
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Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavors, by showing what has already been performed.
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The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.
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No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius.
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Slander is the revenge of a coward, and dissimulation of his defense.
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Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper.
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Attack is the reaction. I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds.
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The botanist looks upon the astronomer as a being unworthy of his regard and he that is glowing great and happy by electrifying a bottle wonders how the world can be engaged by trifling prattle about war and peace.
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One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
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Men go to sea, before they know the unhappiness of that way of life and when they have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession as indeed is generally the case with men, when they have once engaged in any particular way of life.
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Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do.
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Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past.
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To wipe all tears from off all faces is a task too hard for mortals but to alleviate misfortunes is often within the most limited power: yet the opportunities which every day affords of relieving the most wretched of human beings are overlooked and neglected with equal disregard of policy and goodness.
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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.
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The great effect of friendship is beneficence, yet by the first act of uncommon kindness it is endangered.
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