This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
But it is evident, that these bursts of universal distress are more dreaded than felt; thousands and ten thousands flourish in youth, and wither in age, without the knowledge of any other than domestic evils, and share the same pleasures and vexa?tions, whether their kings are mild or cruel, whether the armies of their country pursue their enemies or retreat before them.
Distinction | Virtue | Virtue | Think |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured; but thousands and millions are of small avail to alleviate the tortures of the gout, to repair the broken organs of sense, or resuscitate the powers of digestion. Poverty is, indeed, an evil from which we naturally fly; but let us not run from one enemy to another, nor take shelter in the arms of sickness.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Among those whom I never could persuade to rank themselves with idlers, and who speak with indignation of my morning sleeps and nocturnal rambles, one passes the day in catching spiders, that he may count their eyes with a microscope; another exhibits the dust of of a marigold separated from the flower with a dexterity worthy of Leuwenhoeck himself. Some turn the wheel of electricity; some suspend rings to a loadÂstone, and find that what they did yesterday, they can do again today. - Some register the changes of the wind, and die fully convinced that the wind is changeable. - There are men yet more profound, who have heard that two colorless liquors may produce a color by union, and that two cold bodies will grow hot if they are mingled: they mingle them, and produce the effect expected, say it is strange, and mingle them again.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Pride is seldom delicate, it will please itself with very mean advantages; and envy feels not its own happiness, but when it may be compared with the misery of others.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.
Distinction | Virtue | Virtue | Think |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor.
Confidence | Piety | Regard | Virtue | Virtue | Friendship | Politeness |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?
Means | Virtue | Virtue | Friendship |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
Acquaintance | Love | Men | People | Virtue | Virtue | Old | Think |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
To resist temptation once is not a sufficient proof of honesty. If a servant, indeed, were to resist the continued temptation of silver lying in a window, when he is sure his master does not know how much there is of it, he would give a strong proof of honesty. But this is a proof to which you have no right to put a man. You know there is a certain degree of temptation which will overcome any virtue. Now, in so far as you approach temptation to a man, you do him an injury; and, if he is overcome, you share his guilt.
Gold | Heaven | Life | Life | Love | Mortal | Virtue | Virtue | Worth |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Wit will never make a man rich, but there are places where riches will always make a wit.
Conscience | Freedom | Means | Remorse | Self-esteem | Virtue | Virtue |
By my soul, I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep; nor, what's still worse, love any woman in the world but her.