Controvertists cannot long retain their kindness for each other.
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Controversies merely speculative are of small importance in themselves, however they may have sometimes heated a disputant, or provoked a faction.
It is common for controversists, in the heat of disputation, to add one position to another till they reach the extremities of knowledge, where truth and falsehood lose their distinction.
The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.
The luster of diamonds is invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a picture are created by the shades; the highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue.
I should as soon think of contradicting a bishop.
Many falsehoods are passing into uncontradicted history.
It may likewise contribute to soften that resentment which pride naturally raises against opposition, if we consider, that he who differs from us, does not always contradict us; he has one view of an object, and we have another; each describes what he sees with equal fidelity, and each regulates his steps by his own […]
The Fountain of Content must spring up in the mind; and… he, who has so little knowledge of human nature, as to seek happiness by changing anything, but his own dispositions, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove.
I have found by long experience, that there are few enterprises so hopeless as contests with the fashion, in which the opponents are not only made confident by their numbers and strong by their union, but are hardened by contempt of their antagonist, whom they always look upon as a wretch of low notions, contracted […]
