Except perhaps for G.K. Chesterton, with whom he is often compared, no writer or figure in the English language is more often quoted than Samuel Johnson. He has remarked, and remarked wisely, on almost every topic pertinent to the noble cause of human living. The latter eighteenth century in English literature is called the Age of Johnson, as Johnson endowed the English language with new depth and precision.

A profoundly religious person, Samuel Johnson became a man of courage, wisdom and charity, growing in these virtues through a difficult life full of suffering and hardships. Fundamental to Johnson's world view was the belief that political and social ills are problems of individaul morality, and that the only real basis for peace and justice is the love of God and obedience to his commandments.

Stephen Danckert has gathered here a treasure trove of wisdom and inspiration from Johnson's writings which offer a vision of suffering overcome, and of a life lived manfully, thankfully and generously. His quotes cover every topic from Asceticism to Ambition, Failure to Forgiveness, Hypocrisy to Holiness, Vanity to Virtue and moch more. No one can read Johnson without coming away nobler, kinder and more generous. He had a strong influence on other great men like Newman and Chesterton, and it was Chesterton who said that "the world will always return to Johnson, almost as it returns to Aristotle, because Johnson also judged all things with a gigantic and detached good sense."

"This book explains fully why Johnson was so highly regarded even before Boswell made his entrance. In every age there are those who are impatient with the follies and constraints of the age, and these, now as then, are Johnson's readership. Johnson offers truth and permanence. The Age of Johnson is always."
-Joseph Sobran
from the Foreword

"To find Johnson arranged here in a series of his moral reflections is cause for the deepest meditation and abiding wonderment. Johnson continues to teach us that the rightness of truth and the virtue of human living are intimately related."
James V. Schall, S.J.
Author, Another Sort of Learning