A Quote by Samuel Johnson

It is easy for a man who sits idle at home, and has nobody to please but himself, to ridicule or censure the common practices of mankind.

Samuel Johnson

Quote Topics

Censure Common Easy Himself Home Idle Man Mankind Nobody Please Practices Ridicule

Quote Author

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

All violation of established practice implies in its own nature a rejection of the common opinion, a defiance of common censure, and an appeal from general laws to private judgment: he, therefore, who differs form others without apparent advantage, ought not to be angry if his arrogance is punished with ridicule; if those whose example he superciliously overlooks, point him out to derision, and hoot him back again into the common road.

Samuel Johnson

He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure. The dread of censure is the death of genius.

William Gilmore Simms

critic, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.

Ambrose Bierce

An egotist will always speak of himself, either in praise or in censure, but a modest man ever shuns making himself the subject of his conversation.

Jean de la Bruyere

Mankind are very odd creatures: one half censure what they practice, the other half practice what they censure; the rest always say and do as they ought.

Benjamin Franklin

There are three kinds of nature in man, as Nicetas Stethatos further explains: the carnal man, who wants to live for his own pleasure, even if it harms others; the natural man, who wants to please both himself and others; and the spiritual man, who wants to please only God, even if it harms himself. The first is lower than human nature, the second is normal, the third is above nature; it is life in Christ.

Tito Colliander

The missing link between animals and a truly humane mankind is man himself, who does not yet see himself as a part of the world, claiming it instead for himself.

Michael Fox

A young man rarely gets a better vision of himself than that which is reflected from a true woman's eyes; for God himself sits behind them.

J. G. Holland

These are the signs of a wise man: to reprove nobody, to praise nobody, to blame nobody, nor even to speak of himself or his own merits.

Epictetus

They say: 'If a man knew himself, he would know all mankind.' I say: 'If a man loved mankind, he would know something of himself.

Khalil Gibran

The superior man is easy to serve, but difficult to please ... The inferior man is difficult to serve, but easy to please.

Confucius

Man is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road.

John Locke

My words are easy to understand and easy to perform, Yet no man under heaven knows them or practices them.

Laozi

It is easy - terribly easy - to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man's spirit is devil's work.

George Bernard Shaw

No man will subject himself to the ridicule of pretending that any natural connection subsists between the sun or the seasons, and the period within which human virtue can bear the temptations of power. Happily for mankind, liberty is not, in this respect, confined to any single point of time, but lies within extremes, which afford sufficient latitude for all the variations which may be required by the various situations and circumstances of civil society.