Samuel Johnson Quotes on Truth
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Here closed in death th' attentive eyes That saw the manners in the face.
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Round numbers are always false.
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Declamation roared, while Passion slept.
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Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from learning to be wise. There mark what ills the scholar's life assail - Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.
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In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
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But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in few words.
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A lady once asked him how he came to define Pastern the knee of a horse: instead of making an elaborate defence, as she expected, he at once answered, 'Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance.'
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I [Boswell] was somewhat disappointed in finding that the edition of The English Poets, for which he was to write Prefaces and Lives, was not an undertaking directed by him: but that he was to furnish a Preface and Life to any poet the booksellers pleased. I asked him if he would do this to any dunce's works, if they should ask him. JOHNSON: 'Yes, Sir, and say he was a dunce.'
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It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.
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The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things - the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.