“All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to shew how much he can spare.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer
April 25, 1778, p. 403
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III
“Then, all censure of a man's self is oblique praise.”
25 April 1778
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791)
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Do you have more details about the quote "Then, all censure of a man's self is oblique praise." by James Boswell?
James Boswell23
Scottish lawyer, diarist and author 1740–1795Related quotes
“It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise…”
W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up
Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 223
“Cold approbation gave the ling'ring bays,
For those who durst not censure, scarce could praise.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer
Prologue at the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre (1747)
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)
Diary (14 July 1889)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter
Source: Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary
“Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.”
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright
No. 101 (26 June 1711), this has sometimes been quoted as "It is the privilege of posterity to set matters right between those antagonists who, by their rivalry for greatness, divided a whole age".
The Spectator (1711–1714)
Context: If men of eminence are exposed to censure on one hand, they are as much liable to flattery on the other. If they receive reproaches which are not due to them, they likewise receive praises which they do not deserve. In a word, the man in a high post is never regarded with an indifferent eye, but always considered as a friend or an enemy. For this reason persons in great stations have seldom their true characters drawn till several years after their deaths. Their personal friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they were engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues can have justice done them. When writers have the least opportunity of knowing the truth, they are in the best disposition to tell it.
It is therefore the privilege of posterity to adjust the characters of illustrious persons, and to set matters right between those antagonists who by their rivalry for greatness divided a whole age into factions.
“No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another.”
Thomas Browne book Religio Medici
Section 4
Religio Medici (1643), Part II
“The lucky man is honored …
But earnest striving wins no praise at all.”
Theognis of Megara (-570–-485 BC) Greek lyric poet active in approximately the sixth century BC
Source: Elegies, Lines 169-170, as translated by Dorothea Wender.