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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.

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
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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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What is said upon a subject is gathered from an hundred people.
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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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Life protracted is protracted woe.
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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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I wish there were some cure, like the lover's leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession.
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I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.
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The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
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I do not see, Sir, that it is reasonable for a man to be angry at another, whom a woman has preferred to him but angry he is, no doubt and he is loath to be angry at himself.
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Advice is offensive, it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves.
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No man can have much kindness for him by whom he does not believe himself esteemed, and nothing so evidently proves esteem as imitation.
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When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.
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Our minds should not be empty because if they are not preoccupied by good, evil will break in upon them.
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A cow is a very good animal in the field but we turn her out of a garden.
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Fear naturally quickens the flight of guilt.
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All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.
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Nobody can be taught faster than he can learn.
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It was the maxim, I think, of Alphonsus of Aragon, that dead counsellors are safest. The grave puts an end to flattery and artifice, and the information we receive from books is pure from interest, fear, and ambition. Dead counsellors are likewise most instructive, because they are heard with patience and with reverence.
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Those whose abilities or knowledge incline them most to deviate from the general round of life are recalled from eccentricity by the laws of their existence.
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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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In general those parents have the most reverence who most deserve it for he that lives well cannot be despised.
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