10 Samuel Johnson Quotes on Truth

Samuel Johnson quotes on truth

20. Here closed in death th' attentive eyes That saw the manners in the face.

26. Round numbers are always false.

32. Declamation roared, while Passion slept.

35. 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.

51. In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

60. 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.

114. 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.'

152. 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.'

157. It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.

205. 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.