Quote

To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.

Samuel Johnson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Innocence
Granted
Tongue
Invariable
Virtue
Exemption
Eye
Prerogative
Great
Suspect
Suspects
Dread

More quotes by Samuel Johnson

Image
Almost all the moral good which is left among us is the apparent effect of physical evil.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The hostility perpetually exercised between one man and another, is caused by the desire of many for that which only few can possess. Every man would be rich, powerful, and famous yet fame, power, and riches, are only the names of relative conditions, which imply the obscurity, dependence, and poverty of greater numbers.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Glory, the casual gift of thoughtless crowds! Glory, the bribe of avaricious virtue!
Samuel Johnson
Image
All power of fancy over reason is a degree of madness.
Samuel Johnson
Image
To those who have lived long together, everything heard and everything seen recalls some pleasure communicated, some benefit conferred, some petty quarrel or some slight endearment. Esteem of great powers, or amiable qualities newly discovered may embroider a day or a week, but a friendship of twenty years is interwoven with the texture of life.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Whisky making is the art of making poison pleasant
Samuel Johnson
Image
Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.
Samuel Johnson
Image
It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.
Samuel Johnson
Image
This world, where much is to be done and little to be known.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances it is often concealed in splendour, and often in extravagance.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I have already enjoyed too much give me something to desire.
Samuel Johnson
Image
The heroes of literary history have been no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved.
Samuel Johnson
Image
I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to he right.
Samuel Johnson
Image
He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.
Samuel Johnson
Image
A lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.
Samuel Johnson
Image
One of the amusements of idleness is reading without fatigue of close attention and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read.
Samuel Johnson
Image
There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself.
Samuel Johnson
Image
Politics are now nothing more than means of rising in the world.
Samuel Johnson