Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.
Author
Samuel Johnson
112 quotations
About Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson, often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer and polymath who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. The work for which he is best known is his 42,733-entry Dictionary of the English Language (1755). For this and other contributions in and to the English language, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has called him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English …
Read on Wikipedia → Find books by Samuel JohnsonTo keep your secret is wisdom but to expect others to keep it is folly.
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.
Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.
It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.
In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
Advertisement
It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.
Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.
It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.
The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.
A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.
Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.
Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.
There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.
Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.
He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.
Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.