Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The mischief of flattery is, not that it persuades any man that he is what he is not, but that it suppresses the influence of honest ambition, by raising an opinion that honour may be gained without the toil of merit.
Samuel Johnson
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
May
Toil
Without
Raising
Men
Honour
Merit
Suppresses
Ambition
Persuades
Influence
Mischief
Honest
Flattery
Opinion
Gained
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
They who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it.
Samuel Johnson
Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.
Samuel Johnson
I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.
Samuel Johnson
If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination.
Samuel Johnson
There is nothing so minute, or inconsiderable, that I would not rather know it than not.
Samuel Johnson
All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare.
Samuel Johnson
Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.
Samuel Johnson
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
Samuel Johnson
We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
Samuel Johnson
There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance.
Samuel Johnson
No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction. A man is pleased that his wife is dressed as well as other people, and the wife is pleased that she is dressed.
Samuel Johnson
Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.
Samuel Johnson
He who endeavors to please must appear pleased.
Samuel Johnson
It is better to live rich than to die rich.
Samuel Johnson
Friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness and its permanence from the other.
Samuel Johnson
Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.
Samuel Johnson
Pleasure that is obtained by unreasonable and unsuitable cost must always end in pain.
Samuel Johnson
It is better a man should be abused than forgotten.
Samuel Johnson
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.
Samuel Johnson
When a man feel the reprehension of a friend seconded by his own heart, he is easily heated into resentment.
Samuel Johnson
