B.S. Johnson Quotes

Quack: A boastful pretender to arts which he does not understand. A vain boastful pretender to physick; An artful, tricking practitioner in physick.

Ease, a neutral state between pain and pleasure ... if it is not rising into pleasure will be falling towards pain.

Excise: A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.

Expectation improperly indulged in must end in disappointment.

Friendship may well deserve the sacrifice of pleasure, though not of conscience.

If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur.

It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.

Merit rather enforces respect than attracts fondness.

The cure for the greatest part of human miseries is not radical, but palliative.

The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment.

There is in this world no real delight (excepting those of sensuality), but exchange of ideas in conversation.

There is nothing so minute, or inconsiderable, that I would not rather know it than not.

Towering is the confidence of twenty-one.

Whatever is proposed, it is much easier to find reasons for rejecting than embracing.

Most men are unwilling to be taught.

He who attempts to do all will waste his life in doing little.

Pointed axioms and acute replies fly loose about the world, and are assigned successively to those whom it may be the fashion to celebrate.

To be prejudiced is always to be weak

A family ... is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to revolutions.

The whole of life is but keeping away the thoughts of death.

As long as one lives he will have need of repentance.

We often need reminding even if we do not often need educating.

As pride sometimes is hid under humility, idleness if often covered by turbulence and hurry.

It is to be steadily inculcated, that virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness.

No man should attempt to teach others what he has never learned himself

People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.

It is astonishing that any man can forbear enquiring seriously whether there is a God; whether God is just; whether this life is the only state of existence.

He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed. The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich.

He who 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.

No knowledge is useless, with the exception of heraldry.

Celestial wisdom calms the mind.

Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination.

As any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice.

Nothing concentrates one's mind so much as the realization that one is going to be hanged in the morning!

Poetry cannot be translation

It is our first duty to serve society, and after we have done that, we may attend wholly to the salvation of our own souls.

Actions are visible, though motives are secret.

Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.

We never do anything consciously for the last time without sadness of heart.

I do not care to speak ill of a man behind his back, but I believe he is an attorney.

I have already enjoyed too much; give me something to desire.

And panting Time toil'd after him in vain.

A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.

Sir, you must not neglect doing a thing immediately good from fear of remote evil; - from fear of its being abused.

He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.

Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings; let us be therefore cautious of how we strip her.