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Diffidence may check resolution and obstruct performance, but compensates its embarrassments by more important advantages it conciliates the proud, and softens the severe averts envy from excellence, and censure from miscarriage.

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
Advantage
Severe
Obstruct
Proud
Resolution
Miscarriage
May
Check
Diffidence
Important
Checks
Softens
Excellence
Avert
Envy
Censure
Performance
Embarrassment
Embarrassments
Performances
Advantages
Compensates

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Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.
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Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy, affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly the one completes a villain, the other only finishes a fop.
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I would advise you, Sir, to study algebra, if you are not an adept already in it: your head would get less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbours about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.
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This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.
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The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
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I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.
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...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.
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Year chases year, decay pursues decay, Still drops some joy from with'ring life away New forms arise, and diff'rent views engage
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Liberty is the parent of truth, but truth and decency are sometimes at variance. All men and all propositions are to be treated here as they deserve, and there are many who have no claim either to respect or decency.
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The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercized in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.
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Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances it is often concealed in splendour, and often in extravagance.
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Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.
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The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy their real faults are immediately detected and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an individual weight of calumny will be super-added.
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It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination.
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So different are the colors of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.
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A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company
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Quotation is a good thing, there is a community of thought in it.
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How few of his friends' houses would a man choose to be at when he is sick.
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To proportion the eagerness of contest to its importance seems too hard a task for human wisdom. The pride of wit has kept ages busy in the discussion of useless questions, and the pride of power has destroyed armies, to gain or to keep unprofitable possessions.
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The habit of looking on the bright side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year.
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