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Merit rather enforces respect than attracts fondness.

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
Enforces
Fondness
Attracts
Merit
Respect
Rather

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Whatever professes to benefit by pleasing must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something sudden and unexpected that which elevates must always surprise.
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What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.
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There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other. When speech is employed only as the vehicle of falsehood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave and seek prey only for himself.
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Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly placed within our reach.
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If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.
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Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.
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Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.
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Memory is like all other human powers, with which no man can be satisfied who measures them by what he can conceive, or by what he can desire.
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He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.
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I have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch and tumbling into it
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Small debts are like small shot they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon of loud noise, but little danger.
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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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A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.
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The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
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Your manuscript is both good and original but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
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Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do.
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There is little peace or comfort in life if we are always anxious as to future events. He that worries himself with the dread of possible contingencies will never be at rest.
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Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.
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I have always said the first Whig was the Devil.
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A person loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal.
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