Samuel Johnson Quotations | Page 11

Few have abilities so much needed by the rest of the world as to be caressed on their own terms; and he that will not condescend to recommend himself by external embellishments must submit to the fate of just sentiment meanly expressed, and be ridiculed and forgotten before he is understood.

All violation of established practice implies in its own nature a rejection of the common opinion, a defiance of common censure, and an appeal from general laws to private judgment: he, therefore, who differs form others without apparent advantage, ought not to be angry if his arrogance is punished with ridicule; if those whose example he superciliously overlooks, point him out to derision, and hoot him back again into the common road.

The appearance and retirement of actors are the great events of the theatrical world; and their first performances fill the pit with conjecture and prognostication, as the first actions of a new monarch agitate nations with hope and fear.

Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, - attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

Many falsehoods are passing into uncontradicted history.

If, sir, men were all virtuous, I should with great alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be the security of the good if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the clouds neither wall, nor mountains, nor seas could afford any security.

Wise married women don't trouble themselves about infidelity in their husbands.

None but those who have learned the art of subjecting their senses as well as reason to hypothetical systems can be persuaded by the most specious rhetorician that the lots of life are equal; yet it cannot be denied that every one has his peculiar pleasures and vexations, that external accidents operate variously upon different minds, and that no man can exactly judge from his own sensations what another would feel in the same circumstances.

There are occasions on which it is noble to dare to stand alone. To be pious among infidels, to be disinterested in a time of general venality, to lead a life of virtue and reason in the midst of sensualists, is a proof of a mind intent on nobler things than the praise or blame of men, of a soul fixed in the contemplation of the highest good, and superiour to the tyranny of custom and example.

To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.

Sir, they are a race of convicts and ought to be grateful for anything we allow them short of hanging.

Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do.

Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much; Who, born for the Universe, narrowed his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.

Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.

If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.

The gratification of curiosity rather frees us from uneasiness than confers pleasure; we are more pained by ignorance than delighted by instruction. Curiosity is the thirst of the soul; it inflames and torments us, and makes us taste every thing with joy, however otherwise insipid, by which it may be quenched.

Among the lower classes of mankind there will be found very little desire of any other knowledge than what may contribute immediately to the relief of some pressing uneasiness, or the attainment of some near advantage.

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last; and perhaps always predominates in proportion to the strength of the contemplative faculties. He who easily comprehends all that is before him, and soon exhausts any single subject, is always eager for new inquiries; and in proportion as the intellectual eye takes in a wider prospect, it must be gratified with variety, by more rapid flights and bolder excursions.

Curiosity, like all other desires, produces pain as well as pleasure.

I am far from any intention to limit curiosity, or confine the labours of learning to arts of immediate and necessary use. It is only from the various essays of experimental industry, and the vague excursions of mind set upon discovery, that any advancement of knowledge can be expected; and though many must be disappointed in their labours, yet they are not to be charged with having spent their time in vain; their example contributed to inspire emulation, and their miscarriage taught others the way to success.

But the distant hope of being one day useful or eminent ought not to mislead us too far from that study which is equally requisite to the great and mean, to the celebrated and obscure; the art of moderating the desires, of repressing the appetites; and of conciliating or retaining the favour of mankind.

Those who have past much of their lives in this great city, look upon its opulence and its multitudes, its extent and variety, with cold indifference; but an inhabitant of the remoter parts of the kingdom is immediately distinguished by a kind of dissipated curiosity, a busy endeavour to divide his attention amongst a thousand objects, and a wild confusion of astonishment and alarm.

Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation.

Network. Anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.

The business of the poet, said Imlac, is to examine, not the individual, but the species.

Example is always more efficacious than precept.

It is generally agreed, that few men are made better by affluence or exaltation.

It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.

Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity; but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects, and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation.

As a madman is apt to think himself grown suddenly great, so he that grows suddenly great is apt to borrow a little from the madman.

That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments....

Sleep is a state in which a great part of every life is passed. No animal has yet been discovered, whose existence is not varied with intervals of insensibility; and some late philosophers have extended the empire of sleep over the vegetable world.

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.

Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor.

Friendship is not always the sequel of obligation....

I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.

Cunning has effect from the credulity of others, rather than from the abilities of those who are cunning. It requires no extraordinary talents to lie and deceive.

All imposture weakens confidence and chills benevolence.

Whoever commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him who he deceives, but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society.

Falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and once uttered are sullenly supported.

Though I love to spend, I hate be cheated, and I found that to build is to be robbed.

What signifies protesting so against flattery when a person speaks well of one, it must either be true or false, you know if true, let us rejoice in his good opinion if he lies, it is a proof at least that he loves more to please me, than to sit s

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.

Prosperity's right hand is industry and her left hand is frugality.

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.

The great effect of friendship is beneficence, yet by the first act of uncommon kindness it is endangered.

Friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness and its permanence from the other.

Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion.

That eminence of learning is not to be gained without labour, at least equal to that which any other kind of greatness can require, will be allowed by those who wish to elevate the character of a scholar; since they cannot but know that every human acquisition is valuable in proportion to the difficulty of its attainment.

Where there is no difficulty there is no praise.

No man can perform so little as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitude that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful.

All industry must be excited by hope.

He that floats lazily down the stream, in pursuit of something borne along by the same current, will find himself indeed moved forward; but unless he lays his hand to the oar, and increases his speed by his own labour, must be always at the same distance from that which he is following.

When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.

Those who attempt nothing themselves think every thing easily performed, and consider the unsuccessful always as criminal.

An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay, And glides in modest innocence away.

Avarice is always poor.

Pity is not natural to man. Children and savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason. We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in distress, without pity; but we have not pity unless we wish to relieve him.

Officious, innocent, sincere, Of every friendless name the friend.

A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.

A man is not obliged honestly to answer a question which should not properly be put.

There is little peace or comfort in life if we are always anxious as to future events. He that worries himself with the dread of possible contingencies will never be at rest.

Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take care of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.

Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new.

Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know That life protracted is protracted woe.

We took tea, by Boswell's desire; and I eat one bun, I think, that I might not be seen to fast ostentatiously. When I find that so much of my life has stolen unprofitably away, and that I can descry by retrospection scarcely a few single days properly and vigorously employed, why do I yet try to resolve again? I try, because reformation is necessary and despair is criminal. I try, in humble hope of the help of God.

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into the short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.

The finest landscape in the world is improved by a good inn in the foreground.

Women can spin very well, but they cannot write a good book of cookery.

Men hate more steadily than they love.

Philips, whose touch harmonious could remove The pangs of guilty power and hapless love! Rest here, distress'd by poverty no more; Here find that calm thou gav'st so oft before; Sleep undisturb'd within this peaceful shrine, Till angels wake thee with a note like thine!

Among the calamities of war may be numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.

It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

The truly strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.

There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.

Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.

I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.

It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful.

A cow is a very good animal in the field; but we turn her out of a garden.

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.

Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate.

Every man is of importance to himself.

Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.

All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.

The truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.

Assertion is not argument; to contradict the statement of an opponent is not proof that you are correct.

A merchant may, perhaps, be a man of an enlarged mind, but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind.

Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.

Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his home town: yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life; and as nothing is little to him that feels it with gre

I would consent to have a limb amputated to recover my spirits

Judgment is forced upon us by experience

We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures

When a man marries a widow his jealousies revert to the past: no man is as good as his wife says her first husband was

Attainment is followed by neglect, possession by disgust, and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to many another course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last

Those who have any intention of deviating from the beaten roads of life, and acquiring a reputation superior to names hourly swept away by time among the refuse of fame, should add to their reason and their spirit the power of persisting in their pur

Time quickly puts an end to artificial and accidental fame

Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions

Reason and truth will prevail at last

In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence.

Confidence is a plant of slow growth; especially in an aged bosom