Quote

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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Condemned to Hope's delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts or slow decline Our social comforts drop away.
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Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.
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The specualtist, who is not content with superficial views, harasses himself with fruitless curiosity and still, as he inquires more, perceives only that he knows less.
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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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Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion.
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It is generally agreed, that few men are made better by affluence or exaltation.
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All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.
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Domestic discord is not inevitably and fatally necessary but yet it is not easy to avoid.
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The poor and the busy have no leisure for sentimental sorrow.
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He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.
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A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company
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Don't tell me of deception a lie is a lie, whether it be a lie to the eye or a lie to the ear.
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Power is gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent.
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Of many, imagined blessings it may be doubted whether he that wants or possesses them had more reason to be satisfied with his lot.
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The process is the reality.
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Every man, however hopeless his pretensions may appear, has some project by which he hopes to rise to reputation some art by which he imagines that the attention of the world will be attracted some quality, good or bad, which discriminates him from the common herd of mortals, and by which others may be persuaded to love, or compelled to fear him.
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Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.
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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
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Your aspirations are your possibilities.
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Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is but it is not easy to tell what it is.
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