"In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath."
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Quote collection
Samuel Johnson quotes (page 39 of 88)
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"It is not uncommon to charge the difference between promise and performance, between profession and reality, upon deep design and studied deceit; but the truth is, that there is very little hypocrisy in the world."
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"The necessities of our condition require a thousand offices of tenderness, which mere regard for the species will never dictate."
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"Self-love is often rather arrogant than blind; it does not hide our faults from ourselves, but persuades us that they escape the notice of others."
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"It is our first duty to serve society."
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"Labor, if it were not necessary for existence, would be indispensable for the happiness of man."
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"Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy."
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"Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult."
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"To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a delicious employment of the poets"
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"Those whose abilities or knowledge incline them most to deviate from the general round of life are recalled from eccentricity by the laws of their existence."
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"No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance, or to extinguish the desire of fond endearments and tender officiousness; and, therefore, no one should think it unnecessary to learn those arts by which friendship may be gained."
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"These are the men who, without virtue, labour, or hazard, are growing rich, as their country is impoverished; they rejoice, when obstinacy or ambition adds another year to slaughter and devastation; and laugh, from their desks, at bravery and science, while they are adding figure to figure, and cipher to cipher, hoping for a new contract from a new armament, and computing the profits of a siege or tempest."
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"Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, roll darkly down the torrent of his fate."
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"We have now learned that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking credit; let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily restrained from giving it."
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"Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost."
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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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"Courtesy and good-humour are often found with little real worth."
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"Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both."
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"People have now a-days got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do as much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken."
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"I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit [in London], than in all the rest of the kingdom."
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