Book III, Ch. 11. Of Cripples
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question.”
“A great many people seem to delight most in what they least understand.”
The Analysis of Beauty (1753)
“5426. We are apt to believe what we wish for.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“Men are apt to offend ('tis true) where they find most goodness to forgive.”
Act IV, scene xi
The Old Bachelor (1693)
“3387. Men apt to promise, are apt to forget.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
"Rip Van Winkle".
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)
“In most cases men willingly believe what they wish.”
Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.
Book III, Chapter 18
Variant translation: Men willingly believe what they wish to be true.
As quoted in The Adventurer No. 69 (3 July 1753) in The Works of Samuel Johnson (1837) edited by Arthur Murphy, p. 32
Compare: "What each man wishes, that he also believes to be true" Demosthenes, Olynthiac 3.19
De Bello Gallico
“Weak men are apt to be cruel.”
http://books.google.com/books?id=K6lsEtMo1KMC&q=%22Weak+men+are+apt+to+be+cruel%22&pg=PA128#v=onepage
Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Moral Thoughts and Reflections
“What most men do not know - and if they could know it, why could they be called on to believe it?”
Is that this blue sky, though illusory as an optical error and belied by the vision of interplanetary space, is nonetheless an adequate reflection of the Heaven of the Angels and the Blessed and that therefore, despite everything, it is this blue mirage, flecked with silver clouds, that is right and will have the final say; to be astonished at this amounts to admitting that it is by chance that we are here on earth and see the sky as we do.
Understanding Islam (1963)
Source: Speaker for the Dead
