Quote #58

The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.

Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

More from Samuel Johnson

  1. That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?
  2. Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equall…
  3. No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.
  4. But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehensio…
  5. Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.
  6. Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.
  7. No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.
  8. I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.

All Samuel Johnson quotes