Quote

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.

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
Destructive
Deliberation
Taints
Cool
Extends
Libertine
Committed
Profane
Atrocious
Air
Wider
Infused
Effects
Wickedness
Draught
Influence
Loose
Pestilence
Writing
Poison
Drunken
Author
Giddy

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Flattery pleases very generally. In the first place, the flatterer may think what he says to be true but, in the second place, whether he thinks so or not, he certainly thinks those whom he flatters of consequence enough to be flattered.
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Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.
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Every man that has felt pain knows how little all other comforts can gladden him to whom health is denied. Yet who is there does not sometimes hazard it for the enjoyment of an hour?
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You cannot give me an instance of any man who is permitted to lay out his own time contriving not to have tedious hours.
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People have now a-days got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do as much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken.
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Suspicion is very often a useless pain.
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Care that is once enter'd into the breast Will have the whole possession ere it rest.
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Few things are so liberally bestowed, or squandered with so little effect, as good advice.
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Hope is necessary in every condition.
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Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.
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Books have always a secret influence on the understanding we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas he that reads books of science, thogh without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing.
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Among the calamities of war may be numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.
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No one ever became great by imitation.
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In general those parents have the most reverence who most deserve it for he that lives well cannot be despised.
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One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
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Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it.
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To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
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Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence.
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As the faculty of writing has chiefly been a masculine endowment, the reproach of making the world miserable has always been thrown upon the women.
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Scarcely any degree of judgment is sufficient to restrain the imagination from magnifying that on which it is long detained
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