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A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.

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
Men
Diffused
Innocently
Falsehoods
Successive
Afterwards
Falsehood
Sufficient

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

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The mathematicians are well acquainted with the difference between pure science, which has only to do with ideas, and the application of its laws to the use of life, in which they are constrained to submit to the imperfections of matter and the influence of accidents.
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Hunger is never delicate they who are seldom gorged to the full with praise may be safely fed with gross compliments, for the appetite must be satisfied before it is disgusted.
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It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy unenvied, to be healthful without physic, and secure without a guard to obtain from the bounty of nature, what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of artists and attendants, of flatterers and spies.
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A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company
Samuel Johnson
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People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.
Samuel Johnson
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Excise: A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.
Samuel Johnson
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Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn. [Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.]
Samuel Johnson
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To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind, because their preference was made without, a comparison but it has never been my fortune to find, either in ancient or modern writers, any honourable mention of those, who have, with equal blindness, hated their country.
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Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.
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Life, however short, is made still shorter by waste of time.
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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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The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment.
Samuel Johnson
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The most useful truths are always universal, and unconnected with accidents and customs.
Samuel Johnson
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The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.
Samuel Johnson
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I am a friend to subordination, as most conducive to the happiness of society. There is a reciprocal pleasure in governing and being governed.
Samuel Johnson
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High people, sir, are the best take a hundred ladies of quality, you'll find them better wives, better mothers, more willing to sacrifice their own pleasures to their children, than a hundred other woman.
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Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.
Samuel Johnson
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He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar and many fold in their passage while they lie waiting for the gale.
Samuel Johnson
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Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions
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When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.
Samuel Johnson