Will Johnson
Will Johnson
despair may overcoming
Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated; and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavors, by showing what has already been performed.
ivy wife ruins
A good wife is like the ivy which beautifies the building to which it clings, twining its tendrils more lovingly as time converts the ancient edifice into a ruin.
law definitions maxims
It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous.
purpose use paper
These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.
vices pleasure
Pleasure itself is not a vice
praise falsehood
None can be pleased without praise, and few can be praised without falsehood.
reading remembered
What is twice read is commonly better remembered that what is transcribed.
pain relaxation may
He that never labors may know the pains of idleness, but not the pleasures.
religion church dangerous
To be of no Church is dangerous.
secret credit scandal
As every one is pleased with imagining that he knows something not yet commonly divulged, secret history easily gains credit; but it is for the most part believed only while it circulates in whispers, and when once it is openly told, is openly refuted.
secret guilt secrecy
To tell your own secrets is generally folly, but that folly is without guilt; to communicate those with which we are intrusted is always treachery, and treachery for the most part combined with folly.
thinking long secret
The rules that I shall propose concerning secrecy, and from which I think it not safe to deviate without long and exact deliberation, are, never to solicit the knowledge of a secret,--not willingly, nor without many limitations, to accept such confidence when it is offered; when a secret is once admitted, to consider the trust as of a very high nature, important as society and sacred as truth, and therefore not to be violated for any incidental convenience, or slight appearance of contrary fitness.
revenge coward defense
Slander is the revenge of a coward, and dissimulation of his defense.
sorrow leisure sentimental
The poor and the busy have no leisure for sentimental sorrow.