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We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor

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
Giving
Easily
Wickedness
Time
Crime
Deceit
Gives
Crimes
Endeared
Growth
Shocked
Artifices
Full
Favor
Artifice
Interest
Distinction
Distinctions
Form
Favors
Gradual
Self
Appear
Magnitude

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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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Slavery is now nowhere more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.
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One of the most pernicious effects of haste is obscurity.
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Wealth is nothing in itself it is not useful but when it departs from us.
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He who sees different ways to the same end, will, unless he watches carefully over his own conduct, lay out too much of his attention upon the comparison of probabilities and the adjustment of expedients, and pause in the choice of his road, till some accident intercepts his journey.
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Some claim a place in the list of patriots, by an acrimonious and unremitting opposition to the court. This mark is by no means infallible. Patriotism is not necessarily included in rebellion. A man may hate his king, yet not love his country.
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Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.
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The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.
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Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet.
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This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.
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As a madman is apt to think himself grown suddenly great, so he that grows suddenly great is apt to borrow a little from the madman.
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Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.
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Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.
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It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination.
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Dishonor waits on perfidy. A man should blush to think a falsehood it is the crime of cowards.
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I look upon this as I did upon the Dictionary: it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.
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To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.
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That man is never happy for the present is so true, that all his relief from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little while. Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
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Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?
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Yet reason frowns in war's unequal game, Where wasted nations raise a single name And mortgag'd states their grandsire's wreaths regret, From age to age in everlasting debt Wreaths which at last the dear-bought right convey To rust on medals, or on stones decay.
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