A Quote by Samuel Johnson

The faults of a man loved or honoured sometimes steal secretly and imperceptibly upon the wise and virtuous, but by injudicious fondness or thoughtless vanity are adopted with design.

Samuel Johnson

Quote Topics

Adopted Design Faults Fondness Honoured Loved Man Secretly Sometimes Steal Thoughtless Vanity Virtuous Wise

Quote Author

Samuel Johnson
English - Writer
September 18, 1709 - December 13, 1784

The wise find pleasure in water; the virtuous find pleasure in hills. The wise are active; the virtuous are tranquil. The wise are joyful; the virtuous are long-lived.

Confucius

Advice, as it always gives a temporary appearance of superiority, can never be very grateful, even when it is most necessary or most judicious. But for the same reason everyone is eager to instruct his neighbours. To be wise or to be virtuous is to buy dignity and importance at a high price; but when nothing is necessary to elevation but detection of the follies or faults of others, no man is so insensible to the voice of fame as to linger on the ground.

Samuel Johnson

History is littered with examples of objects and inventions with a power beyond their professed purpose. Sometimes it's deliberately and maliciously factored into their design, but at other times, it's a result of thoughtless omissions.

Hannah Fry

If we steal a man's purse we are thieves. If we steal twelve hundred islands we are patriots. If you steal a man's money you will be sent to the penitentiary. If you steal his liberty you will be sent to the White House.

William Jennings Bryan

There has never been any country at every moment so virtuous and so wise that it has not sometimes needed to be saved from itself.

Havelock Ellis

A wise man seeks by music to strengthen his soul: the thoughtless one uses it to stifle his fears.

Confucius

If there is a single quality that is shared by all great men, it is vanity. But I mean by vanity only that they appreciate their own worth. Without this kind of vanity they would not be great. And with vanity alone, of course, a man is nothing.

Yousuf Karsh

A man often thinks he rules himself, when all the while he is ruled and managed; and while his understanding directs one design, his affections imperceptibly draw him into another.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

One should follow a man of wisdom who rebukes one for one's faults, as one would follow a guide to some buried treasure. To one who follows such a wise man, it will be an advantage and not a disadvantage.

Gautama Buddha

I will give you a definition of a proud man: he is a man who has neither vanity nor wisdom one filled with hatreds cannot be vain, neither can he be wise.

John Keats

Since, therefore, no man is born without faults, and he is esteemed the best whose errors are the least, let the wise man consider everything human as connected with himself; for in worldly affairs there is no perfect happiness under heaven.

Giraldus Cambrensis

When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.

Khaled Hosseini

If the Wise be the happy man... he must be virtuous too; for, without virtue, happiness cannot be. This then is the true scope of all academical emulation.

Thomas Jefferson

Cato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.

Plutarch

Now this relaxation of the mind from work consists on playful words or deeds. Therefore it becomes a wise and virtuous man to have recourse to such things at times.