It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.
Samuel Johnson Quotes
The eye of wealth is elevated towards higher stations, and seldom descends to examine the actions of those who are placed below the level of its notice, and who in distant regions and lower situations are struggling with distress, or toiling for bread. Among the multitudes overwhelmed with insuperable calamity, it is common to find […]
Among those who have endeavoured to promote learning and rectify judgment, it has long been customary to complain of the abuse of words, which are often admitted to signify things so different that, instead of assisting the understanding as vehicles of knowledge, they produce error, dissension, and perplexity, because what is affirmed in one sense […]
Few have strength of reason to overrule the perceptions of sense, and yet fewer have curiosity or benevolence to struggle long against the first impression: he who therefore fails to please in his salutation and address is at once rejected, and never obtains an opportunity of showing his latest excellences or essential qualities.
The people is a very heterogeneous and confused mass of the wealthy and the poor, the wise and the foolish, the good and the bad.
Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand, than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties.
As peace is the end of war, it is the end, likewise, of preparations for war; and he may be justly hunted down, as the enemy of mankind, that can choose to snatch, by violence and bloodshed, what gentler means can equally obtain.
He that wishes to see his country robbed of its rights cannot be a patriot. That man, therefore, is no patriot, who justifies the ridiculous claims of American usurpation; who endeavours to deprive the nation of its natural and lawful authority over its own colonies, which were settled under English protection; were constituted by an […]
Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him; and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive; for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities; as false coins have often lustre, though they want […]
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 honorable mention of those, who have, with equal blindness, hated their country.
