Junius was the pseudonym of an unidentified author of 69 letters to the Public Advertiser between 1769 and 1772. In addition to the scornful political and legal commentary, Junius’s letters were notorious for the mystery surrounding the author’s identity and for the inside information he seemed to possess.
Junius letters graduated from an argument with British Army officer Sir William Draper to recurring attacks on Prime Minister Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd Duke of Grafton, and then a long-winded, offensive letter to King George III. Junius’s letters became a political sensation, boosting the sales of Public Advertiser.
The identity of Junius has never been categorically ascertained; some 45 candidates have been suggested. Many scholars tend to attribute his identification with the politician and pamphleteer Philip Francis (1740–1818,) then a senior clerk in the British War Office.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Junius
Notable talents are not necessarily connected with discretion.
—Junius
Topics: Judgment, Judging
I have learned by much observation, that nothing will satisfy a patriot but a place.
—Junius
Topics: Patriotism
A very honest man, and a very good understanding, may be deceived by a knave.
—Junius
It behooves the minor critic, who hunts for blemishes, to be a little distrustful of his own sagacity.
—Junius
Topics: Criticism, Critics
An obstinate, ungovernable self-sufficiency plainly points out to us that state of imperfect maturity at which the graceful levity of youth is lost and the solidity of experience not yet acquired.
—Junius
The vices operate like age; bringing on disease before its time, and in the prime of youth they leave the character broken and exhausted.
—Junius
Topics: Vice
If individuals have no virtues, their vices may be of use to us.
—Junius
Topics: Vice
How much easier it is to be generous than just! Men are sometimes bountiful who are not honest.
—Junius
Topics: Generosity
Guilt is a poor, helpless, dependent being. Without the alliance of able, diligent, and let me add, fortunate fraud, it is inevitably undone. If the guilty culprit be obstinately silent, it forms a deadly presumption against him; if he speaks, talking tends only to his discovery, and his very defence often furnishes the materials for his conviction.
—Junius
Topics: Guilt
In a great business there is nothing so fatal as cunning management.
—Junius
Topics: Cunning
A thorough and mature insensibility is rarely to be acquired but by a steady perseverance in infamy.
—Junius
The lives of the best of us are spent in choosing between evils.
—Junius
Topics: Evils, Decisions
Be not affronted at a jest; if one throw ever so much salt at thee thou wilt receive no harm unless thou art raw and ulcerous.
—Junius
Topics: Humor, Jokes
We owe it to our ancestors to preserve entire those rights they have delivered to our care. We owe it to our posterity not to suffer their dearest inheritance to be destroyed.
—Junius
Topics: Ancestors, Ancestry
Gratuitous violence in argument betrays a conscious weakness of the cause, and is usually a signal of despair.
—Junius
The violation of party faith, is, of itself, too common to excite surprise or indignation.—Political friendships are so well understood that we can hardly pity the simplicity they deceive.
—Junius
Topics: Politics
After long experience of the world, I affirm, before God, that I never knew a rogue who was not unhappy.
—Junius
Guilt alone, like brain-sick frenzy in its feverish mood, fills the light air with visionary terrors, and shapeless forms of fear.
—Junius
Topics: Guilt
It is the eternal truth in the political as well as the mystical body, that, where one members suffers, all the members suffer with it.
—Junius
Topics: Sympathy, Politicians, Politics
I hold myself indebted to any one from whose enlightened understanding another ray of knowledge communicates to mine.—Realty to inform the mind is to correct and enlarge the heart.
—Junius
Topics: Understanding
The injustice done to an individual is sometimes of service to the public.
—Junius
Topics: Justice
Where the guilt is doubtful, a presumption of innocence should in general be admitted.
—Junius
Topics: Guilt
He that can only boast of a distinguished lineage, boasts of that which does not belong to himself; but he that lives worthily of it is always held in the highest honor.
—Junius
Topics: Ancestry
When once a man is determined to believe, the very absurdity of the doctrine does but confirm him in his faith.
—Junius
Topics: Persuasion
Even legal punishments lose all appearance of justice, when too strictly inflicted on men compelled by the last extremity of distress to incur them.
—Junius
Topics: Punishment
There is a holy, mistaken zeal in politics, as well as in religion. By persuading others, we convince ourselves.
—Junius
Topics: Persuasion
It is the coward who fawns upon those above him. It is the coward who is insolent whenever he dares be so.
—Junius
Topics: Coward, Cowardice
To attack vices in the abstract, without touching persons, may be safe fighting, but it is fighting with shadows.
—Junius
Topics: Vice
Let it be impressed upon your minds, let it be instilled into your children, that the liberty of the press is the palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights.
—Junius
Topics: Media
The coldest bodies warm with opposition; the hardest sparkle in collision.
—Junius
Topics: Opposition
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