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Virtue and Vice
39. Innocence
He [Johnson] would not allow his servant to say he was not at
home when he really was. "A servant's strict regard for the
truth must be weakened by such a practice. A philosopher may
know that it is merely a form of denial; but few servants are
such nice distinguishers. If I accustom a servant to tell a lie
for me, have I not reason to apprehend that he will tell
many lies for himself."
Boswell: Life
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892. Innocence
"These practices [deceit, bribery, taking advantage of others,
etc.] are so mean and base that he who finds in himself no
tendency to use them cannot easily believe that they are
considered by others with less detestation; he, therefore,
suffers himself to slumber in false security, and become a prey
to those who applaud their own subtility, because they know how
to steal upon his sleep, and exult in the success which they
could never have obtained, had they not attempted a man better
than themselves, who was hindered from obviating their
stratagems, not by folly, but by innocence."
Johnson: Rambler #79 (December 18, 1750)
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894. Innocence
"Frequent experience of counterfeited miseries and dissembled
virtue in time overcomes that disposition to tenderness and
sympathy which is so powerful in our younger years."
Johnson: Rambler #79 (December 18, 1750)
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895. Deceit; History; Innocence
"Historians are certainly chargeable with the depravation of
mankind, when they relate, without censure, those stratagems of
war by which the virtues of an enemy are engaged to his
destruction. A ship comes before a port, weather-beaten and
shattered, and the crew implore the liberty of repairing their
breaches, supplying themselves with necessaries, or burying their
dead. The humanity of the inhabitants inclines them to consent,
the strangers enter the town with weapons concealed, fall
suddenly upon their benefactors, destroy those that make
resistance, and become masters of the place; they return home
rich with plunder, and their success is recorded to encourage
imitation."
Johnson: Rambler #79 (December 18, 1750)
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896. Innocence; War
"Surely war has its laws, and ought to be conducted with some
regard to the universal interest of man. Those may justly be
pursued as enemies to the community of nature, who suffer
hostility to vacate the unalterable laws of right, and pursue
their private advantages by means which, if once established,
must destroy kindness, cut off from every man all hopes of
assistance from another, and fill the world with perpetual
suspicion and implacable malevolence."
Johnson: Rambler #79 (December 18, 1750)
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898. Goodness; Innocence;
Suspicion
"As it is necessary not to invite robbery by supineness, so it is
our duty not to suppress tenderness by suspicion; it is better
to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes
cheated than not to trust."
Johnson: Rambler #79 (December 18, 1750)
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1,454. Innocence; Youth
"The youth has not yet discovered how many evils are continually
hovering about us, and when he is set free from the shackles of
discipline, looks abroad into the world with rapture; he sees an
elysian region open before him, so variegated with beauty, and so
stored with pleasure that his care is rather to accumulate good,
than to shun evil; he stands distracted by different forms of
delight, and has no other doubt than which path to follow of
those which all lead equally to the bowers of happiness."
Johnson: Rambler #196 (February 1, 1752)
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1,455. Innocence
"He who has seen only the superficies of life believes every
thing to be what it appears, and rarely suspects that external
splendour conceals any latent sorrow or vexation."
Johnson: Rambler #196 (February 1, 1752)
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