“Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound; great debts are like cannon, of loud noise but little danger.”

Letter http://books.google.com/books?id=yEA_AQAAMAAJ&q=%22small+debts+are+like+small+shot+they+are+rattling+on+every+side+and+can+scarcely+be+escaped+without+a+wound+great+debts+are+like+cannon+of+loud+noise+but+little+danger%22&pg=PA189#v=onepage to Joseph Simpson, circa 1759
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound; great de…" by Samuel Johnson?
Samuel Johnson photo
Samuel Johnson 362
English writer 1709–1784

Related quotes

Ambrose Bierce photo

“Riven and torn with cannon-shot, the trunks of the trees protruded bunches of splinters like hands, the fingers above the wound interlacing with those below.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: What I Saw At Shiloh (1881), VII

Donald J. Trump photo
Donald J. Trump photo
David Hume photo

“Avarice, the spur of industry, is so obstinate a passion, and works its way through so many real dangers and difficulties, that it is not likely to be scared by an imaginary danger, which is so small, that it scarcely admits of calculation.”

Part I, Essay 12: Of Civil Liberty
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)
Context: Avarice, the spur of industry, is so obstinate a passion, and works its way through so many real dangers and difficulties, that it is not likely to be scared by an imaginary danger, which is so small, that it scarcely admits of calculation. Commerce, therefore, in my opinion, is apt to decay in absolute governments, not because it is there less secure, but because it is less honourable.

Donald J. Trump photo
David Livingstone photo

“People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay?”

David Livingstone (1813–1873) Scottish explorer and missionary

Speech to students at Cambridge University (4 December 1857)
Context: People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger now and then with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause and cause the spirit to waver and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.

Cassandra Clare photo
Mark Twain photo

“Worrying is like paying a debt you don't owe.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
William Cobbett photo

“Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Letter (10 February 1804).

Donald J. Trump photo

Related topics