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
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
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
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
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
I have learned by much observation, that nothing will satisfy a patriot but a place.
—Junius
Topics: Patriotism
The coldest bodies warm with opposition; the hardest sparkle in collision.
—Junius
Topics: Opposition
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
To attack vices in the abstract, without touching persons, may be safe fighting, but it is fighting with shadows.
—Junius
Topics: Vice
Some men are bigoted in politics, who are infidels in religion.—Ridiculous credulity!
—Junius
Compassion to an offender who has grossly violated the laws is, in effect, a cruelty to the peaceable subject who has observed them.
—Junius
Topics: Compassion
Gratuitous violence in argument betrays a conscious weakness of the cause, and is usually a signal of despair.
—Junius
Notable talents are not necessarily connected with discretion.
—Junius
Topics: Judgment, Judging
How much easier it is to be generous than just! Men are sometimes bountiful who are not honest.
—Junius
Topics: Generosity
Vanity indeed is a venial error; for it usually carries its own punishment with it.
—Junius
Topics: Vanity
Liberal minds are open to conviction. Liberal doctrines are capable of improvement. There are proselytes from atheism; but none from superstition.
—Junius
Topics: Superstition
Injuries may be atoned for and forgiven; but insults admit of no compensation; they degrade the mind in its own esteem, and force it to recover its level by revenge.
—Junius
If individuals have no virtues, their vices may be of use to us.
—Junius
Topics: Vice
When once a man is determined to believe, the very absurdity of the doctrine does but confirm him in his faith.
—Junius
Topics: Persuasion
Assertion, unsupported by fact, is nugatory.—Surmise and general abuse, is however elegant language, ought not to pass for truth.
—Junius
The integrity of men is to be measured by their conduct, not by their professions.
—Junius
Topics: Integrity
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
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
A thorough and mature insensibility is rarely to be acquired but by a steady perseverance in infamy.
—Junius
It is a maxim received in life that, in general, we can determine more wisely for others than for ourselves. The reason of it is so clear in argument that it hardly wants the confirming of experience.
—Junius
Topics: Wisdom, Judgment
Let all your views in life be directed to a solid, however moderate, independence; without it no man can be happy, nor even honest.
—Junius
Topics: Independence
A generous nation is grateful even for the preservation of its rights, and willingly extends the respect due to the office of a good prince into an affection for his person.
—Junius
Topics: Popularity
As for the differences of opinion upon speculative questions, if we wait till they are reconciled, the action of human affairs must be suspended forever.—But neither are we to look for perfection in any one man, nor for agreement among many.
—Junius
Topics: Opinion
It behooves the minor critic, who hunts for blemishes, to be a little distrustful of his own sagacity.
—Junius
Topics: Criticism, Critics
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
How much easier is it to be generous than just.
—Junius
Topics: Generosity
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: Politicians, Politics, Sympathy
A very honest man, and a very good understanding, may be deceived by a knave.
—Junius
It is more than possible, that those who have neither character nor honor, may be wounded in a very tender part, their interest.
—Junius
Oppression is more easily borne than insult.
—Junius
Topics: Insults, Oppression
Where the guilt is doubtful, a presumption of innocence should in general be admitted.
—Junius
Topics: Guilt
The injustice done to an individual is sometimes of service to the public.
—Junius
Topics: Justice
There is a holy, mistaken zeal in politics, as well as in religion. By persuading others, we convince ourselves.
—Junius
Topics: Persuasion
One precedent creates another.—They soon accumulate, and constitute law.—What yesterday was fact, today is doctrine.—Examples are supposed to justify the most dangerous measures; and where they do not suit exactly, the defect is supplied by analogy.
—Junius
Topics: Facts
It is the coward who fawns upon those above him. It is the coward who is insolent whenever he dares be so.
—Junius
Topics: Cowardice, Coward
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Lu Xun Chinese Writer
Andre Norton American Science Fiction Writer
Stefan Zeromski Polish Novelist
Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) Danish Novelist, Short-story Writer
Gerard de Nerval French Poet, Writer
Don DeLillo American Author
Mario Puzo American Novelist
Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) French Writer
John Watson (Ian Maclaren) Scottish Clergyman
Anne Bronte English Novelist, Poet