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Politeness is fictitious benevolence.
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
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Fictitious
Politeness
Benevolence
Manners
More quotes by Samuel Johnson
Nothing is more common than to find men, whose works are now totally neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries as the oracles of their age, and the legislators of science.
Samuel Johnson
No one will persist long in helping someone who will not help themselves.
Samuel Johnson
Why, sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, Sir, is not in Nature.
Samuel Johnson
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
Samuel Johnson
The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion.
Samuel Johnson
Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality they discourse like angels, but they live like men.
Samuel Johnson
I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom.
Samuel Johnson
There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets.
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
To purchase Heaven has gold the power? Can gold remove the mortal hour? In life can love be bought with gold? Are friendship's pleasures to be sold? No--all that's worth a wish--a thought, Fair virtue gives unbribed, unbought. Cease then on trash thy hopes to bind, Let nobler views engage thy mind.
Samuel Johnson
Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world.
Samuel Johnson
If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.
Samuel Johnson
Was there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim's Progress?
Samuel Johnson
I remember a passage in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.
Samuel Johnson
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.
Samuel Johnson
Nothing is more common than for men to make partial and absurd distinctions between vices of equal enormity, and to observe some of the divine commands with great scrupulousness, while they violate others, equally important, without any concern, or the least apparent conciousness of guilt. Alas, it is only wisdom which perceives this tragedy.
Samuel Johnson
If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
Samuel Johnson
We ought not to raise expectations which it is not in our power to satisfy.-It is more pleasing to see smoke brightening into flame, than flame sinking into smoke.
Samuel Johnson
Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.
Samuel Johnson
A person loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal.
Samuel Johnson
