Samuel Johnson Quotes
All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.
Johnson, Samuel. "The Rambler No. 114." The Rambler, vol. 4, J. Payne and J. Bouquet, 1752, p. 95.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, 1777-1864, had written the infamous Dred Scott decision requiring free states to return escaped slaves from the South. This decision widened the gap between North and South and made the Civil War almost inevitable. See {584921}.
Samuel Johnson, often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. Religiously, he was a devout Anglican, and politically a committed Tory. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes Johnson as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is the subject of James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, described by Walter Jackson Bate as "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature".
