Quote

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.

Samuel Johnson

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Samuel Johnson
Age: 75 †
Born: 1709
Born: September 18
Died: 1784
Died: December 13
Biographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Lexicographer
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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Poet
Politician
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Lichfield
Staffordshire
Dr Johnson
Dr. Johnson
Great Moralist
Made
Whose
Comparison
Never
Equal
Hated
Men
Virtue
Considered
Love
Modern
Otherwise
Either
Ancient
Honourable
Find
Fortune
Blindness
Without
Writers
Mention
Country
Blind
Preference

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He who endeavors to please must appear pleased.
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A fallible being will fail somewhere.
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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.]
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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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All envy is proportionate to desire we are uneasy at the attainments of another, according as we think our own happiness would be advanced by the addition of that which he withholds from us.
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Turn on the prudent Ant, thy heedful eyes, Observe her labours, Sluggard, and be wise.
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Present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.
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It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.
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Flattery pleases very generally. In the first place, the flatterer may think what he says to be true but, in the second place, whether he thinks so or not, he certainly thinks those whom he flatters of consequence enough to be flattered.
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Our minds should not be empty because if they are not preoccupied by good, evil will break in upon them.
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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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Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in himself
Samuel Johnson
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That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.
Samuel Johnson
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The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
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Words become low by the occasions to which they are applied, or the general character of them who use them and the disgust which they produce arises from the revival of those images with which they are commonly united.
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Riches, perhaps, do not so often produce crimes as incite accusers.
Samuel Johnson
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It may be laid down as a position which seldom deceives, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong.
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I wish there were some cure, like the lover's leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession.
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There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.
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Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Every advance into knowledge opens new prospects, and produces new incitements to farther progress.
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